Media mayhem: violence in Venezuela sparked by press.

Hellinger, Daniel

Venezuela's traditional ruling class, in opposition to the elected, populist president, Hugo Chavez Frias, has relied extensively on the country's private media not only to tell its story but to orchestrate its efforts to overthrow Chavez. The president has responded with threats to enforce media laws requiring social responsibility. His supporters, often egged on by the president's harsh rhetoric, have staged noisy, sometimes threatening, rallies outside privately owned newspapers and television stations. Occasionally these protests have escalated into the sacking of stations and threats against the physical safety of reporters.

On the other side, journalists face threats of firing by owners who insist on unremittingly negative coverage of the government. Also, reporters who are sympathetic to Chavez, especially those working for the government owned Venezolana de Television, have been attacked by middle class demonstrators.

Business organizations, which include a sector of labor led by leaders associated with the discredited parties of the pre-Chavez era, most of the nation's major newspapers, and all five of the private national television networks launched the general strike on Dec. 2, having failed on April 11 to force Chavez out via a military coup.

The Venezuelan crisis might attract little attention in the United States were it not for the role of the country's oil in the North American market. With a new Gulf War apparently inevitable, a general strike threatened to remove the one element of Chavez's rule designed to appease the Bush administration: keeping the flow of oil steady. Almost the entire professional and managerial staff of the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, and enough of the workforce, walked off the job, strangling exports during December and January.

Why is the Venezuelan media so hostile to Chavez? Opposition journalists and media owners blame the president for their decision to join the Coordinadora and abandon objectivity. They say he has abused his right under Venezuela law to commandeer national broadcast time. By labeling all critics, including the media, as the "squalid ones," the president has distracted the population from his own failings and incited anger against the media.

Government censorship was minimal in Venezuela before Chavez, but a symbiotic relationship existed between the government and the media. Political parties, directly subsidized by the state, spent massively on advertising. The political sections of daily newspapers were packed with ads announcing party forums, neighborhood celebrations, congratulatory messages, ads for radio and television programs hosted by prominent personalities.

The chavista agenda of change inevitably places him in conflict with the highly globalized media. Chavez has proclaimed himself an opponent of economic globalization and the uncontested hegemony of the United States. Venezuela's media barons preside over enterprises linked in many ways to national and global economic forces and communications. So, the media responds in kind, almost welcoming indiscreet condemnations as evidence that they are merely defending democracy.

During the confusing period of April 10-14, 2002, Venezuela's private media acted in a way strongly suggesting complicity in the plot to overthrow Chavez. First, major news outlets brazenly invoked opponents into the streets for a demonstration in front of oil company headquarters; then they carried calls by organizers to march on the presidential palace and demand the military remove Chavez. Thousands of Chavez supporters had mobilized and military units were deployed to head off any such action. Not surprisingly, when the two sides met near the presidential palace, violence erupted. News teams edited film reports to depict the resulting incident as an unprovoked act of repression by the government. In fact, a majority of deaths were among Chavez counter-demonstrators.

Community broadcasters

Using low power transmitters, camcorders and Internet technologies, grassroots broadcasters had sprung up as an alternative to the mass commercial media. Some were organized by "Bolivarian Circles" linked closely to Chavez, but others are associated with social movements that keep an arm's length from the president and his movement. Alienated by the opening antagonistic role of the national media, and angry about stereotyping of Venezuela's poor majority, these groups have multiplied in the months since the April events and played an important role in providing alternative, independent reporting.

Community media groups have documented lethal aggression of Caracas police against pro-Chavez groups. The state-run media have taken these reports and others and re-broadcast them. All over the country and on the internet, videotape interviews presenting pro-government narratives have become available. In addition, these groups have created an alternative cultural space for popular music, sporting events, etc. Proposed legislation to legalize what the private media groups call "pirate broadcasters" provided an additional motive for commercial broadcasters to support the strike, which sought to oust the president immediately, even though the Constitution allows for a referendum on Chavez as early as August 2002.

Taking sides

or defending journalism?

Only the most sycophantic admirers of Chavez believe that his words are not offensive. In a February 2001 broadcast, for example, the president excoriated "a tiny group of four or five persons that for years have accumulated money and media power" and accused them of fomenting a conspiracy against him. "Down with these reporters and capitalism," he concluded. Was the president prescient in identifying how complicit the media were in plotting his overthrow, or was he engaged in a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Media attacks on the president are just as virulent, but less visible in international reporting. For example, the headline of El Nacional on March 21, 2002, said, "Hugo Chavez admits to being the head of a criminal network." Comparisons to Fidel Castro are among the kinder references. More often columnists and talk show hosts compare Chavez to Idi Amin, Mussolini, or Hitler. While unruly and threatening chavista demonstrators are called "turbas" (mobs), middle-class demonstrators who beat up journalists from pro-government media or who nearly lynched government officials during April's brief interregnum are labeled "civil society."

Rarely are positive actions on the part of Chavez acknowledged. After the official Venezuelan press agency, VenPress, accused three journalists of involvement in drug trafficking, the three took their protests to the U.S. embassy and then on to Washington. The VenPress report was repudiated publicly both by Chavez and his defense minister, and the director of VenPress was censured and fired. This action was little noted by international observers.

Adriana Oviedo, a psychology professor at the Central University, says the Venezuelan private media have for months carried out "systematic attacks on the psyche of the citizenry in order to impede thought and reflection about the events of April 11. On the contrary, it has fed the population day and night a permanent campaign of incrimination of the government for the deaths that occurred on that bitter day."

"The media, perhaps at this moment the most powerful political organizations in the country," writes Margarita Lopez Maya, a historian at the Central University, "lacks both rationality and a culture of tolerance; defense of its private interests have become central in its political activities."

On Dec. 6, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote a letter to Chavez detailing recent physical assaults on journalists. CPJ criticized Chavez for failing to take "firm and decisive action to investigate attacks against journalists and media outlets." CPJ also included threats and assaults on the part of the opposition against reporters for the government-owned network.

In its 2002 annual report, Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) did not list the threats and assaults of the opposition press. It states, "The repeated verbal attacks of Hugo Chavez have continued, although they have not been followed by acts of repression. Nonetheless, the President's politics of intimidation have adopted new forms: threatening to revoke the broadcasting license of a television station, threatening tax audits, a proposal to limit freedoms ..."

In contrast to CPJ, which has sent teams to Venezuela to consult with local human rights groups, RSF has tended to shoot from the hip. In its 2002 annual report the latter organization fails to mention any incidents threatening community journalists. The report recites a litany of incidents and threats on the part of Chavez supporters and security forces on several reporters. The report omits entirely the reference to the open embrace of the attempted coup by some reporters, most notably Patricia Poleo of the daily El Nuevo Pais.

Harshest in its condemnation of Chavez has been the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). At its 58th General Assembly in Peru in late October, the IAPA criticized the new Bolivian constitution for creating a public right to truthful and objective information, a proposed law to create a National Mass Media Oversight Council, and threats by the president "to suspend the transmission signals of private radio and television outlets, because of disagreement with their news content." The IAPA also accused the president's supporters of physically assaulting and threatening journalists and insinuated their responsibility for the murder of a photojournalist.

The IAPA, aided by funds provided by the CIA, represents media owners more than working journalists. The association has been implicated in the successful destabilization orchestrated by the United States.

Dan Hellinger, professor of political science at Webster University is co-editor of Venezuela in the Chavez Era, just published by Lynne Rienner.