Venezuela's media puzzle
By José Orozco Posted Apr 1 2007
Press freedoms continue to face challenges in Venezuela as President Hugo Chavez gains more control over the country’s institutions. Just into a new six-year term, parliament has granted Chavez legislative powers for 18 months with constitutional reform promising to eliminate presidential term limits. Some fear that such power will induce Chavez to tighten restrictions on press freedoms.
Although the bitter political theater only occasionally sparks violence against journalists, many consider it an occupational hazard. Beyond the tension on the streets, however, legal obstacles loom large when journalists report.
Critics cite the Radio and Television Social Responsibility Law, which they say encourages self-censorship. Article 29 of the law prohibits disturbing the public order without specifying what that amounts to.
“A combination of ill-defined norms and onerous fines would encourage pervasive self-censorship,” said a Human Rights Watch report at the end of 2004 as the bill neared approval.
Another legal obstacle comes in the Penal Code reform, which broadens insult laws when most Latin American countries are doing away with them. It extended the range of public officials protected and increased the prison sentences. Critics call it an instrument to induce self-censorship, which by definition is nearly impossible to prove.
For Ewald Scharfenberg, who heads the Caracas office of the Lima-based Press and Society Institute (IPYS), gone are the days of strong-arming the press.
“These mechanisms are more subtle and sophisticated,” says Scharfenberg. “What you have is a sword of Damocles, an ideal climate for self-censorship.”
Critics see these mechanisms at work in the recent $18,600 fine leveled against the rabidly opposition Tal Cual daily for a satirical editorial penned by humorist Laureano Marquez. The piece addressed Chavez’s young daughter, Rosines, and asked her for help influencing her father. A local court charges Marquez and the daily with “violating the honor, reputation and private life” of Rosines.
Some argue that the government’s strategy has already “neutered” the Televen and Venevision networks. Both eliminated their news talk shows after the Responsibility Law passed, but Televen is coming back with a new show hosted by Jose Vicente Rangel, a long-time journalist who served as Vice President under Chavez until January.
In Venezuela, threats to journalists remain latent or subtle but nevertheless important.
The opposition media have themselves to blame, say government supporters. They claim private media have violated journalistic ethics for political ends.
For context, it helps to look back at the media’s performance between 2002 and 2004 during Venezuela’s political crisis.
Opposition newspapers, radio and TV encouraged protests that led to the April 2002 coup, which received tacit U.S. support. Then, the media failed to cover the fallout. As government supporters rallied to demand Chavez’s reinstatement, local TV showed cartoons.
“The first problem in journalism here is our crisis of ethics,” says Eleazar Diaz Rangel, editor of Ultimas Noticias, Venezuela’s largest newspaper. A government supporter, Diaz Rangel believes “press freedoms have improved under the Chavez government.”
He cites, for example, Jaime Lusinchi’s government (’84-’89), which is widely considered among Venezuela’s most corrupt, as a frequent violator of press freedoms.
Carlos Ball, a Venezuelan journalist and founder of the AIPE news agency, wrote in a recent column that Lusinchi made the renewal of the RCTV network’s 1987 concession contingent on Ball’s firing from an RCTV-owned daily.
Lacking a strong journalistic tradition and a vigorous opposition, anti-Chavez media took on the role of political actors during the ’02-’04 crisis.
“The media supplanted the political parties,” says Marcelino Bisbal, a media expert and university professor. “They privileged the role of political actor over that of mediator, losing credibility.”
Some even call the confrontation a “media war,” alluding to the media’s role in the coup, a two-month national strike and a recall referendum on Chavez’s rule. Both sides have depicted the face-off in epic terms, implicitly justifying their actions by the fact of “war.”
Since the August 2004 referendum, emotions have cooled, and journalistic standards improved. But the country remains polarized, with opposition media and the government colliding frequently on press freedom issues. The crisis may be technically over, but it has left its mark in the political theater and the media.
“Without a doubt, these men, the media owners, continue conspiring to overthrow the government,” says Earle Herrera, a former journalist and currently a pro-Chavez lawmaker.
Without a doubt, Venezuelan private media exercise wide influence. But Herrera provokes a key question: Where does the conspiracy to overthrow Chavez end and fair and valid criticism begin? Unless the government answers this question adequately, every complaint about media bias looks like mere intolerance for dissent.
Not that the government simply complains without taking action of its own.
Faced with a hostile media landscape, says Bisbal, the government is fighting the media war along two fronts. Although the government has passed laws that challenge journalists, it has also developed a potent state media apparatus.
Apart from dozens of pro-government community radio stations, the Chavez government has created Vive TV, Telesur, ANTV and Avila TV. VTV, the state channel, has aggressively promoted Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution all along. The government also recently purchased CMT, a small TV station, for Telesur, a regional news network with a leftist slant.
“If the government doesn’t create media, it falls,” says Herrera. “And no government wants to fall.”
Herrera traces the conflict back to Chavez’s first election victory in December 1998. The old media elite have had it in for him ever since.
“The information minister used to be chosen by the owners,” says Herrera. “They had a part of the parliament. They exercised power, approved laws. This government broke with that. So the reaction was, ‘We’ve got to topple him.’”
For Scharfenberg of the IPYS, Chavez aims to tip the media balance in his favor.
“It comes under these sexy banners of diversifying voices in media,” says Scharfenberg. “The intention is to homogenize information.”
Along these lines, say critics, the case of RCTV marks a new period in Venezuelan press freedoms. Chavez has picked up just where Lusinchi left off.
This time around, the government has decided not to renew RCTV’s license, eliminating one of its staunchest enemies.
“RCTV continues to behave as it did in 2002,” says Herrera. “No state would renew media that had tried to overthrow them.”
Besides its apparent political motivation, the decision has been criticized for this lack of transparency. The government has failed to support its decision with detailed information.
“Despite our meetings with high-ranking government officials, the standards and procedures for concession renewal are ambiguous,” says Carlos Lauría, the Americas Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, after a joint CPJ-IPYS delegation visited Venezuela in January.
On the surface, Venezuelan press freedoms seem safe. Government officials and supporters often refer to the unbridled criticism Chavez receives. Besides the complex case of RCTV, the government has not closed a single media outlet. Several journalists have faced legal trouble but none for political reasons, say officials.
To grasp the media situation, and thus press freedoms, it helps to understand the recent political context. Private media cannot blame Chavez for having abandoned journalistic standards during the political crisis. It also should not surprise anyone that a government bent on a radical transformation of society, which private media colludes against during a coup, should want to limit the press and extend its own media apparatus.
Like any war, this one has casualties, including information itself, the Venezuelan citizens who consume it and the journalists who produce it. While the media elite and their role in the crisis warrants attention, a look at state media shows how acquiescent media hardly solve the problem of providing accurate information.
So, where does the conspiracy end and valid criticism begin? Will this war find a peaceful end or linger into permanence?
For now, critics worry that the RCTV case will be a turning point.
“It’s an escalation,” says Scharfenberg. “It is a shift from yellow alert to orange alert.”
Herrera, by contrast, feels no worries about his old profession.
“They’ve talked about Chavez being a dictator, that he was going to take children away [giving the state custody rights over children],” says Herrera, indicating the opposition’s fears. “And none of that has happened.”