Press freedom under threat in Venezuela
By Phil Gunson Posted Jan 1 2003
Trying to understand contemporary Venezuelan politics using analytical tools derived from elsewhere in the continent, or from previous periods of history, is like opening a can of soup with a nail clipper. It’s going to take a very long time, and you’re sure to end up in quite a mess.
What to make, for example, of a president —- Hugo Chavez —- elected twice in the past four years with large majorities and now accused of seeking to implant a Castroite dictatorship? Or of the fact that this professed leftist, who venerates Che Guevara, is fiercely opposed by a coalition that includes the former ultra-left guerrillas of a party known as Red Flag?
When it comes to press freedom, things are no less complicated. “All the president has to do to demonstrate the freedom of the press is to hand you the latest edition of any daily newspaper,” noted the head of one multilateral body. Yet over the past year, organizations as diverse as the International Press Institute, the Interameri-can Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Watch have all expressed serious concern over what the Inter American Press Association recently called the “systematic violation of freedom of expression.”
President Chavez, a former army officer who staged a failed coup in 1992, has made no secret of his desire to lead a revolution that would transform the lives of the increasingly poor majority. From the beginning, this made him the object of suspicion for the country’s private business leaders, including the press barons. Nonetheless, some felt that he could be steered in the “right” direction if taken in hand early enough. “Our idea was to surround him,” says a top media executive. The plan failed when Chavez made it clear he was serious about his revolution and could be neither dissuaded nor bought off. But increasing criticism from the press brought an increasingly vitriolic reaction from Chavez. For a flavor of what the former soldier’s vitriol is like, here are a couple of recent quotes:
“We no longer care what the [newspaper] owners do. They can take [their papers] and roll them up real tight and stick them in their … pockets.”
“A real, fascist, coup-mongering perversion is behind the big media organizations. ... Garbage, garbage is what it is, just garbage. Lies, perversion, immorality.”
Apologists for Chavez, including the current vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel —- himself a former journalist —- say outbursts like this are “just his way of talking.” But it was not long before the president’s supporters began adding physical violence to verbal abuse. Mobs began appearing outside newspaper and TV offices, demanding the right of reply to articles unfavorable to the government. Then reporters and TV crews on the streets were kicked, punched and verbally attacked. Stones were thrown, cars and equipment were seized and destroyed, and there were even occasional gunshots. Explosive devices have been used against newspapers, radio stations and TV channels, so far fortunately without fatal consequences.
Congressman Alberto Jordan Hernandez, also a journalist, and until recently a member of the president’s Fifth Republic Movement party, keeps track of attacks on the press. “Nowadays,” he says, “journalists hide their credentials because this hatred of the press has been transferred to the public.” TV crews often use unmarked cars and remove the channel logos from their microphones.
On April 11, a huge opposition march advanced towards the presidential palace of Miraflores. Convinced he was facing a coup, Chavez tried to mobilize the army, but key officers refused to obey. In the streets near the palace, gunfire erupted, and 19 people were killed. Among them were press photographer Jorge Tortoza and a secret police agent disguised as a journalist.
Although several civilian supporters of Chavez are on trial for their part in the shootings, the truth of what happened that day remains shrouded in a good deal of mystery. No one knows whether Tortoza and the secret police agent were deliberately targeted or who killed them. Nonethe- less, Tortoza has become a symbol of the threats facing Venezue-lan journalists, many of whom nowadays attend marches dressed in bullet-proof vests, gas masks and helmets.
Outright violence, however, is not the only weapon with which the government has tried to intimidate the press. Opposition media are starved of government advertising. They complain of undue harassment by tax inspectors and the use of compliant judges to revive moribund court cases against them.
One of the government’s most trenchant critics in the press, Teodoro Petkoff, was forced to resign as editor of the evening paper El Mundo, for example, when the owners (the Capriles family) were warned they would lose a multi-million-dollar inheritance claim if they kept him on. El Mundo has since taken a much less combative stance.
In June of this year, not for the first time, President Chavez threatened to revoke the licenses of TV and radio stations that transmitted what he called “terrorist or war propaganda.” The reference was to a spate of videotaped statements by military officers opposed to his government.
In April, as the mass march approached the presidential palace, Chavez had ordered TV stations taken off the air. His excuse was that they had violated the law by splitting the screen while he was making an address to the nation. The address, which lasted more than an hour, coincided with the massacre on the streets outside, which television was thus unable to cover live because the government takes over the airwaves — often with little or no warning — for such addresses (known as cadenas or chains).
In the days leading up to the march, the government had repeatedly interrupted TV coverage of a general strike and demonstrations by using cadenas as often as 17 times in one day. The Organization of American States special rapporteur on freedom of expression described the practice as abusive and called on the government to stop it.
The government argues, with some justification, that most of the media are propaganda tools for the opposition. “We’re facing a clash between two forms of fundamentalism,” says Marcelino Bisbal, former director of the school of communications at the Central University. “In the absence of a strong opposition, the media have assumed that role, which does not belong to them.”
After the April 11 march, Chavez was briefly removed from power by the armed forces. The de facto government that replaced him, headed by business leader Pedro Carmona, fell two days later. But most of the media did their best to black out news of the growing movement to restore Chavez.
“Zero chavistas on the screen [was the order],” says Andres Izarra, then the production manager of a major TV news program. “It was forbidden to show people from the Chavez government.” Izarra resigned in disgust at the censorship, which seriously undermined the media’s case.
“Journalists are the meat in the sandwich,” argues Congressman Jordan Hernandez. “On the one side, we have the government and on the other, the media owners.” Caught between a government with authoritarian tendencies and a media establishment that has lost sight of the need for impartiality, the Venezuelan public too is in danger of losing its constitutional right to be informed in an accurate, truthful and timely manner.