El DoucheBag DUMMIE!
Posted on 05/30/2007 3:50:23 PM PDT by Stultis
5-30-07, 9:24 am
If a news station supports an anti-democratic coup against a democratically elected president, does that station have the right to broadcast ultra-right propaganda over public airwaves? If the government shuts that station down for its democratic violations, does that constitute an attack on freedom of speech? Do the people of a country have the right to decide what they allow broadcasted in their airspace? Or do the corporations have that right?
These are some of the central questions generated by Venezuela’s recent shutdown of “RCTV”, a right-wing television channel that supported the coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. The station reported several lies during the coup, actively encouraged citizens to riot against the government, and then failed to report Chavez’s return to power three days later, instead deciding to broadcast cartoons.
Now, the Venezuelan government has declined to renew RCTV’s broadcast license, and in it’s place, has created a new progressive public television channel. RCTV, obviously facing a big dip in their profits (since they can no longer broadcast in Venezuela), has used their remaining corporate media friends and contacts to incite several protests all across the country, a few of which have turned violent. At the same time, pro-socialist and progressive forces have staged several mass rallies in support of the government’s decision to rid their country of the right-wing propaganda machine.
So who is the greater threat to democracy? A television station with a large audience, vast amounts of wealth, and a proven willingness to lie to it’s viewers and incite them to violence and large-scale anti-democratic actions like, say, a coup? Or a democratically elected government supported by a majority of the population that decides to revoke the news station’s license to broadcast lies over public airwaves?
And isn’t there something hypocritical about a corporation screaming about the violation of its democratic right to free speech, when it has a well documented history of grossly anti-democratic behavior?
In fact, RCTV’s actions, had they taken place in practically any major industrialized democracy around the world, would quite likely have resulted in a much quicker license revocation. The FCC has certainly barred media stations from broadcasting for actions far less significant than treason in the US.
So does this constitute a violation of free speech? Quite simply, no. The ultra-right media capitalists at RCTV still have the right to spread lies, incite people to violence, and support coups. The people of Venezuela have simply decided that RCTV can no longer use their airwaves to do so. They’ll now have to stand on soapboxes out in the streets like everyone else.
I write all of this not to say I completely agree with the particular course of action the Venezuelan government has taken. For starters, a media corporation with as much capital, and with as many friends in the worldwide corporate media (and particularly the US corporate media) should have no problem spinning the Venezuelan’s governments actions as “authoritarian” and anti-democratic. In fact, RCTV’s corporate media friends both in Venezuela (i.e., Globovision) and around the world (e.g., FOX News, CNN, Bloomberg Corporation, etc.) have already started a concerted and coordinated media saturation campaign against the Venezuelan government attempting to convince people that it is an “authoritarian” and “un-democratic” regime.
Yet even if RCTV weren’t part of a very powerful media conglomerate with even more powerful friends, I probably still wouldn’t have supported a license revocation. In my opinion, censorship is never the answer. It gives that which is censored a legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve. I would have instead advocated for a different tactic: lure away the station’s top talent with higher salaries and newer, better shows and launch a concerted campaign to generate much larger audiences, thereby eating into RCTV’s advertising revenue and viewing audience. Furthermore, I would have also advocated doubling or tripling taxes on the corporate media.
Poor S.O.B. was dumb as a post.
The MSM has not had much mention of the TV station takeover in Venezuela and the huge protests about it.
Is the MSM merely Liberal or are they actually Pro-Communist?
You know, I never thought of it that way. The Author is absolutely correct. BAN CBS! And NBC, CNN, ABC, MSNBC....
Matt Parker sounds a bit like one of Orwell’s sheep, except maybe not that smart.
“The MSM has not had much mention of the TV station takeover in Venezuela and the huge protests about it.”
“Is the MSM merely Liberal or are they actually Pro-Communist?”
I`ve been checking in on CNN the last two days. Nary a word about it.
The writer writes as if there is no context, when context is everything.
From the podium on inauguration day, Chavez abrogated the constitution, and fired both the Congress and the Supreme Court. He empaneled a constitutional convention packed with his own supporters, which wrote a constitution to his specifications, and then his congress gave him the power to rule by decree, for those occasions when submitting to his hand-picked congress was too much trouble.
He packed the Supreme Court with his supporters, and then when they were insufficiently servile, threatened them with arrest.
All of this is to say that Venezuela has been in a state of extra-legal revolution since the day he took office.
He was placed under arrest when his forces opened fire on the crowds killing several dozen people, which exposed a split in the army between older officers loyal to the (old) constitutional order and younger officers loyal to Chavez himself. Since his return to power he hasn’t looked back, he has used his civilian goon squads to attack, intimidate, even kill reporters who are mostly leftists themselves and were originally his supporters. To dismiss them as “rightists” is silly, they are no more rightwing than any journalist in the US. What they are is insufficiently servile.
Makes you wonder if they idiot who wrote this article lives in the US.
The older officers should have subjected Chavez to trial under FMJ .223 and saved a vast number of people a whole lot of suffering, we (meaning the US) would not back the officer’s play and Chavez emerged unharmed.
We are our own worst enemy.
This guy is a complete idiot. Does he think Chavez and state TV in general are into entertaining people?
Apparently he lives in TEXAS, fer chrissake! At least he’s cited as being from Dallas when quoted in commie accounts of “anti-war” protests. I believe I met him once while he was a student in Denton (near Dallas).
It’s not an attack on free speech because we’re not going to call it that.
Any questions?
And now he’s going after a second “opposition” TV station, Globovision:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070528/ts_nm/venezuela_television_dc_5
Soon the VZ media will be all pro-Chavez, all the time.
Old rule, but still true: If you are going to kill the king, kill the king.
Usually even the most thuggish of them are smart enough to know that as long as they remain beneficiaries of our beneficence as a free society, they really shouldn't let us know what their real opinion about free speech is.
I say take this guy and send him to Guantanamo!
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Don’t think for one second that the democrat party wouldn’t do in the USA what their buddy Chavez did in Venezuela.
>> “So who is the greater threat to democracy? A television station with a large audience, vast amounts of wealth, and a proven willingness to lie to it’s viewers...” <<
Wow. Rarely has a single sentence allowed a set-up as easily as this one.
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