Interesting article in the MediaGuardian today on how Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez uses TV to govern.
Chavez spent a record-setting 8 hours on the air this past Sunday, hosting his weekly show Alo Presidente. Says Venezuelan Political Scientist Arturo Serrano:
“Chávez governs from Aló Presidente. It is on this show that ministers find out if they have been fired or hired; it is here where mayors and governors are reprimanded for anything they have done wrong.”
No doubt, an interesting experiment in direct governance. Too bad he doesn’t let opposition politicians have the same access to TV he enjoys.
September 25th, 2007 by graeme |
I didn’t know the opposition didn’t have access; where did you get this information?
Surely you’re not confusing quantity with access. In the list of 62 stations you link to, 8 are owned outright by the Venezuelan government. A further 29 are community stations created and funded by the Chavez government. Two are defunct. One, Televen, was forced to fire several anti-Chavez reporters to survive the general strike. RCTV, also on the list, was shut down by the Chavez government. That’s 41 stations, if you’re keeping track. The remaining stations are sports networks, entertainment networks, or channels that claim to be ‘neutral’ in their political views.
And of course, the allowable content of Venezuelan broadcasting is tightly controlled by the Law on Social Responsibility on Radio and Television. This law is widely condemned as state censorship.
Sorry I didn’t put that in my original post.
I just think it’s overly simplistic to say that opposing politicians have no access by pointing to the discontinuation of one (sic) station,(by not extending a license to a highly controversial station), when in fact there are still two major commercial tv stations available to anyone (Venevision, and Televen) and a plethora of regional stations , most of which are commercial.