Television, Morning talk

It would be very easy to dismiss the US government’s expressed concern about Panamanian commercial television being overly concentrated in few politically connected hands as a matter of pure hypocrisy. Especially so, if one just looks at the issue through a gringo lens and concentrates on the corporate agenda that the Federal Communications Commission is pushing under the Bush administration.

But then if one spends some time watching RPC’s “Debate Abierto,” the bait-and-switch fraud that passes for an open debate on the public issues of the day on Torovision becomes very obvious. That show generally features several members of the PRD-Partido Popular alliance, usually with a Mireyista foil or two, shouting each other down to say the same things. They denigrate the PRD-led coalition’s main adversary, Guillermo Endara, rarely allowing one of his supporters on the show to advocate the other point of view. They dismiss the possibility of changing the current corrupt political and constitutional paradigm. They vilify organized labor as a bunch of dogmatic leftist thugs. They champion the discredited political class. All the rudeness serves to cover the fact that it’s a closed-minded, exclusionary discourse by a narrow sliver of society, a show that doesn’t even come close to meeting the public need for a full and open debate on the great controversies of the day.

One of the erstwhile regulars who didn’t fit the Debate Abierto mode, and who was constantly shouted down in her appearances on the show, was Maribel Cuervo de Paredes, the main brain over at the Latin American Journalism Center (CELAP).

Now Maribel has found something else to do in the morning. Along with Rolando Vidal and Marco Castillo, she now appears on the Catholic television channel, FETV, in “Confrontacion,” a public affairs talk show that keeps the promise that Debate Abierto breaks.

The three regulars are polite almost to a fault, and are not obviously aligned to any of the rival factions of the politics as usual faction. Nevertheless, Confrontacion gives the viewers a real diversity of opinions, and political junkies an opportunity to start the morning without having their intelligence insulted.

How serious is the challenge? Consider that, although the MEDCOM corporation that ex-President Ernesto Pérez Balladares and his relatives control own two of Panama’s commercial TV networks and Panama City’s cable system, and even though this country has nothing like the Nielsen ratings to show advertisers and others the true score, MEDCOM/RPC’s Debate Abierto has taken enough of a beating that they have had to change their format, demoting the PRD’s Renato Pereira and the Partido Popular’s Milton Henríquez as the traditional host and replacing them with anchorman Álvaro Alvarado, a journalist without a notorious partisan affiliation.

RPC’s morning television setbacks have surely not been entirely at the hands of FETV. We can safely discount the Rosas family’s Mireyista hype on the Canal Once public miseducational channel --- because in our overwhelming majority the Panamanian people do --- but over on TVN Lucy Molinar’s “30 Minutos con Lucy” must surely have won a segment of viewers who are annoyed by Debate Abierto. Molinar, however, isn’t advertising or conducting a debate. She does a lot of one-on-one interviews with public figures --- more often administrators who have useful information for the viewers than partisan shills --- but discussion of public affairs is just one of several dimensions to her half-hour show. Panamanian broadcast viewers also have MEDCOM’s other commercial network (Telemetro) as an alternative to RPC, and of course cable offers many alternatives, including the Panamanian RCM news channel.

The above options duly noted, it’s mainly Maribel and her colleagues at FETV who are giving the Debate Abierto clique the competition they deserve.

It’s not just a matter of the Catholic channel eschewing Debate Abierto’s implicit misrepresentation of the current presidential contest as a race between Martín Torrijos and José Miguel Alemán. It’s a matter of Confrontacion debating issues that Toro Pérez Balladares’s channels won’t.

For example, the PRD-Partido Popular-Arnulfista-MOLIRENA-Liberal Nacional political class is essentially united around the proposition that Panama should accept whatever free trade deal Uncle Sam has to offer. Thus there is no meaningful debate about the subject on Debate Abierto. On Confrontacion, however, the issue is reviewed not only from various pro and con Panamanian perspectives, but also taking into account the conflicting views within the United States.

FETV’s new morning challenge to the partisan/corporate big boys is a milestone in the Catholic network’s emergence from a minor educational channel into a major competitor. And just like the famous New York-area ad campaign that points out that you don’t have to be Jewish to like Hebrew National kosher sausages, you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate Confrontacion. This is a show for thinking people of all denominations.

Also in this section:
Cool Internet sites
Books: Guarding the Crossroads
Music: Valeria Ovando at Ta'Contento
TV: Confrontación
A century of Panamanian music on the Admin Building steps

review

Morning TV talk gets a real debate