|
CounterPunch
January
4, 2003
Venezuela: Chomsky's Tropical
Nightmare
by FRANCISO ARMADA
and CARLOS MUTANER
To suffer in your own flesh and blood what Noam
Chomsky writes about the ideological power of Media is very different
from reading it. We have enjoyed reading his articles about the
media that helped us understand its enormous influence in contemporary
societies. However, living in Venezuela during the last three
years has allowed us to suffer directly that power.
The role of the media was crucial during
the short coup of last April 11 against the president Hugo Chávez.
Private TV chains and local newspapers maintained a constant
campaign of attack to the government and they supported a national
strike just before the coup. They judged according to their own
biased criterion the demonstrations for and against the coup
and they did not doubt in blaming to the government as author
of the unfortunate deaths occurred that day, near the half among
supporters of the government. They quickly endorsed as leading
authority the self -proclaimed temporary president, a conservative
business leader. They even went so far as to endorse the coup's
first government action whereby the self-proclaimed president
annulled the Constitution of the Republica Bolivariana of Venezuela,
changed the name of the country and dissolved all public powers,
including the legislative power and the dismissal of state governors.
The media quickly launched a campaign with an "Orwellian"
doublespeak celebration of return to "democracy".
While thousands of people took the streets
of the country's main cities calling for the return of President
Chávez, the media progressively began to change its programming
to children's movies and practically suppressed any information
about what was going on inside the country. They justified their
silence with explanations involving "security concerns".
Only when the crowd surrounded media headquarters and demanded
the transmission of current political events did the media managers
and owners agree to deliver some news about the return of the
president.
After the restoration of the legitimate
democratic government, most of the Venezuelan private media continued
its one-sided political action, serving as a crude outlet for
anti-government, pro-coup propaganda. The media has become one
message, to paraphrase McLuhan. They often transmit interviews
with soldiers involved in the coup, dressed in military uniforms
and ask their old comrades-in-arms not to recognize the government.
The media have endorsed the take over of a Caracas square where
groups of civilians, mostly upper middle and upper class, have
supported to the leaders of the coup for months. The daily live
coverage from this square has become the "reality show"
in a grotesque fascist experiment. When several people were injured
and three were killed during a terrible spur of violence in that
square, the media immediately blamed president Chávez,
and aired demonstrations of coup perpetrators blaming the president
for murder and calling on the armed forces to rebel.
The media not only ignores the most obvious
realities, propagates and endorses protests called by the opposition,
censors news about the events carried out in support of the government,
labels Chávez's followers as violent and their opponents
as democrats; it also exaggerates the size of the opposition's
protests while minimizing or ignoring the breadth of support
for Chávez. The media is thus both jury and defendant
in this trial.
Numerous popular demonstrations have
taken place by government supporters against the role of the
media. Recently four young university students initiated a front
hunger strike one of local T.V. chains, while the private media
has yet to consider this event news at all. The private media
has also ignored a caravan of hundreds of vehicles that called
for an end to mass psychological terror and urged people to not
watch private TV channles. This demonstration ended with the
destruction of a dozen television sets in front of one of the
main TV stations.
Popular demonstrations in front of media
headquarters are frequent these days in Caracas and other Venezuelan
cities. The majority of these demonstrations against the media
are peaceful, although one turned violent and ended up with the
destruction of some material goods. While the police protect
TV stations and newspapers, the media continues with its pro-coup
political activism, propaganda, and call for the violent overthrow
of a democratically elected government. While the government
is afraid of curtailing the freedom of expression, viewers cannot
be protected from this media manipulation unless we continue
to build alternative mechanisms of organization, participation
and communication in defence of our society.
Francisco Armada
works in the Ministerio de la Salud y Bienestar Social in Venezuela.
Carlos Mutaner teaches at the University of Maryland at
Baltimore. They can be reached at: farmada@cantv.net
Yesterday's
Features
Dr. Werther
Third
Reich Syndrome: George Will and the Collapse of Historical Knowledge
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Master Plan for the Internet
Robert Jensen
We
Won't Be Fighting for Freedom in Iraq
Krystal Kyer
Not
Another Draft!
M. Shahid Alam
Why
9-11 and Why Now?
Mark Weisbrot
Can the Courts Tackle Corporate Crime?
Alan Maass
Another Kick in the Teeth for the
Unemployed
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
December 24,
2002
Joanne Mariner
Refusing
to Fight in Israel
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Drug
War According to Dr. Mengele: Agent Green Over the Andes
Gavin Martin
Joe Strummer
is Dead: Long Live the Clash!
Daniel Wolff
From Gospel to the Birth of Soul: Sam
Cooke & the Soul Stirrers
David Vest
Stirred and Shaken
Ben Tripp
Yuletide
Saul Landau
The Quiet American Returns
Michael Wolff
X-mas in Zone One
Kevin Begley
Nestlé and a Nation in Famine
Francis Boyle
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Linda Heard
Where are the Wise Men?
Philip Farruggio
On the First Day of X-mas
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|