What the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch has to say about the RCTV revocation:

[originalpckelly]

"'To refuse to grant a new license for the most popular and oldest television channel in the country because the government disagrees with the editorial or political views of this channel, which are obviously critical to Chavez, is a case of censorship,' said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Watch

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/05/27/venezuela.protest/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

And I guess the European Parliament is evil too, right?

"The closure was condemned by the U.S. Senate and the EU Parliament, but Chavez's supporters justified the move by criticizing the journalistic ethics of the channel."

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2723008820070528?pageNumber=2

[Selatius]

1. The EU Parliament vote took place at the end of the plenary session.

Only 7 percent of EU Parliamentarians voted at all. The rest had already gone home. The resolution was opposed by Greens, Social Democrats, Socialists, and other groups in the Parliament.

[originalpckelly]

2. And the human rights watch?

I guess they must have been taken over by the CIA.

[Selatius]

3. Notice I didn't challenge HRW. As the FAIR write-up notes:

(snip)

When Patrick McElwee of the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy interviewed representatives of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists—all groups that have condemned Venezuela's action in denying RCTV's license renewal—he found that none of the spokespersons thought broadcasters were automatically entitled to license renewals, though none of them thought RCTV's actions in support of the coup should have resulted in the station having its license renewal denied. This led McElwee to wonder, based on the rights groups' arguments, "Could it be that governments like Venezuela have the theoretical right to not to renew a broadcast license, but that no responsible government would ever do it?"

McElwee acknowledged the critics' point that some form of due process should have been involved in the decisions, but explained that laws preexisting Chávez's presidency placed licensing decision with the executive branch, with no real provisions for a hearings process: "Unfortunately, this is what the law, first enacted in 1987, long before Chávez entered the political scene, allows. It charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal, but does not seem to require any administrative hearing. The law should be changed, but at the current moment when broadcast licenses are up for renewal, it is the prevailing law and thus lays out the framework in which decisions are made."

Government actions weighing on journalism and broadcast licensing deserve strong scrutiny. However, on the central question of whether a government is bound to renew the license of a broadcaster when that broadcaster had been involved in a coup against the democratically elected government, the answer should be clear, as McElwee concludes:

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107

[Warren Stupidity]

5. No they just seem to be a bit one sided on this issue and on

other issues in latin america.

But how long do you think a broadcast license would be held here in our country after the station in question backed an attempted overthrow of the government?

[MetaTrope]

4. Some people would have it that Vivanco's consistent support of foreign money in Venezuelan politics

makes him a tool of the Bush administration

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start braying about irregularities or lack of respect by their intended victim. And yes, here's Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Chilean-born, Harvard-educated lawyer who leads Human Rights Watch, Americas. We last met Vivanco in this column helping to ease a $1.7-billion aid package for Colombia's military apparatus through the U.S. Congress. This time he's holding a press conference in Caracas, hollering about the "brazen" way Chavez is trying to expand membership of Venezuela's Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for the same reason: viz., that the Venezuelan Supreme Court has been effectively packed the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don't recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that perennial iniquity. It was the Venezuelan Supreme Court that endorsed the dubious vote count for recall earlier this year.