Most ads are interactive -- click on them to visit the folks who make The Panama News possible

business & economy

Also in this section:
The Seguro Social reforms
Interview with Telesur's Aharonian
Business & Economy briefs

The Panama News interview with Telesur’s Aharonian

After 513 years, Latin America to look at itself through its own eyes

The following is an email interview by Eric Jackson of Aram Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan journalist who is now the director general of Telesur and vice president of La Nueva Televisión del Sur, CA. Telesur, a company in which the governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina own shares, is about to begin broadcasting using a satellite that Venezuela recently bought from China.

TPN: When does the Television del Sur begin broadcasting?

Aharonian: The on-air signal test --- the experimental one --- will be on May 24, and the one with programming, on July 24.

TPN: Will it be a news channel, or are there plans to also include entertainment and education programming?

Aharonian: It was never said that it will be a news channel. The journalistic ingredient will be strong --- we’re talking of some 45 percent --- but there will be spaces for documentaries, for the various social organizations, for the rescue of memories and traditions, for education and recreation, for the rescue of Latin American cinema.

TPN: Do you have plans for programming in English?

Aharonian: We will begin with a translation of the news programs to Portuguese, and in a second phase, a segment of programming in English is foreseen. But from the start there will be information from the Anglophone countries in the region.

TPN: Will La Television del Sur be available to viewers in Panama, or in the United States?

Aharonian: It’s a satellite channel and it will be available on cable systems. Moreover, we are looking at the possibility of various strategic alliances to allow the signal to come through by other means.

TPN: Are there plans for La Television del Sur to have a presence in Africa or other southern regions outside of Latin America?

Aharonian: Not in the immediate future, but we are trying to establish agreements and alliances which guarantee the presence of Telesur in the Middle East, in India, in some African countries, in China, in Russia and in Western Europe. We still have to do a satellite engineering study.

TPN: In Panama, the problem with news by way of cable or satellite is that DirecTV Latin America is controlled by the anti-Chávez Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros and our Cable Onda is a company owned by oligarchic families who, although they are competitors with DirecTV, are also customers of Cisneros’s Univision, from which they buy some of their programs. Thus, here it’s very difficult to find news about Venezuela that’s not openly hostile to the government of that country. I imagine that other Latin American countries have the same problem. Do you have a strategy to break this news oligopoly?

Aharonian: There are strategies to distribute our signal in various ways, including by DirecTV or cable systems. It’s an alternative that obviously interests the cable companies, above all if the cable viewers demand it.

TPN: One big problem with alternative news media is that from among the big companies that buy advertising and the ad agency cartels, there are strong pressures to silence voices that disagree with the globalized capitalist paradigm. How can you avoid such pressures at La Television del Sur?

Aharonian: We’re not going to work for or depend upon consumer propaganda, nor upon patrons. We’re taking the pressures into consideration, as we don’t think we can avoid them, but we can design a strategy that permits us to avoid these kinds of exclusionary pressures.

TPN: In the United States they have a mixture of racism and ignorance that eases the acceptance of reporting that is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

One example that jumps into my mind is the case of the former commander of US anti-drug military forces in Colombia, who was jailed along with his wife for drug trafficking. In the Gringo media, the story is that she was this unfortunate addict who tried to buy an ounce of cocaine, but her Colombian chauffer bought a kilo, worsening her addiction to the point that it was necessary for her to get involved in heroin smuggling, and for him to protect his wife it was necessary for him to launder her ill-gotten income. But as a high school girl in the old Canal Zone she was busted by the MPs for selling drugs on one of the bases --- something not reported in the North American media. Nor was there any call to investigate the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) for its “exoneration” of the colonel. In this way it was possible to continue the “common wisdom” that the drug problem in the United States is the result of corrupt politicians and government employees in Latin America and not of corruption among American officials. The subject of drugs is much more complicated, of course.

But how can you present the truth in the face of “The War on Drugs,” not only in the news but also in Hollywood culture, which exists not only in the United States but in Spanish translation all over the Americas?

Aharonian: For 513 years in Latin America we have been being trained to see ourselves through the eyes of others. Many times, to impose their policies and their interests, they have invaded us or imposed military governments upon us. Today it seems that the media dictatorship has been substituted for those military dictatorship, permanently bombarding us with the same messages in the news, in advertising and in popular culture.

For this reason we say that Telesur is a strategic project: it’s the first to assume a massive commitment to present a Latin American vision of Latin America. We’ve begun to see ourselves through our own eyes, we’ve begun to tear down the fences of these media estates. We have just begun….

TPN: Will there be plural opinions presented in La Television del Sur?

Aharonian: Telesur’s reason for existence is to present the cultural diversity and plurality of a continent that believe by people on the outside to be in black and white, but which in reality is in Technicolor. The placing of things in their contexts and news balance are the channel’s ethical bases

TPN: Will there be censorship or control by the governments that hold shares in this network?

Aharonian: Impossible. The management of La Nueva Television del Sur CA, a Latin American multi-state enterprise, is composed of communications professionals, whose mission is comply with the purposes for which the company was founded: a television channel that shows the diversity and plurality of the continent, and helps in the integration that’s taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in parallel, by way of the Factoria Latinoamericana de Contenidos, to help in the production of new programs for Telesur and other channels in the region, or outside of the Americas as well.

TPN: Usually the politicians in the United States say that in their country they have freedom of the press, but in Venezuela they don’t. What is your opinion of this argument?

Aharonian: Venezuela not only has broad freedom of expression and of the press, but we have also been given some cases of true licentiousness. Can we say that the same happens in the United States? Isn’t it true that there’s a Patriot Act there?

TPN: One of the most shameful things about Panamanian television is that, even though whites are less than 10 percent of the population here, all most all of the models on the ads are light-skinned, as are the actresses on Panamanian productions. The message to the great majority of young girls is “white is beautiful and you’re not, so you’re not.” They say that in Venezuela one aspect of the political struggle is “the brunettes against the blondes.” Do you plan to adopt different standards of beauty on La Television del Sur? Will it be important for women on your new network to be “good looking?”

Aharonian: The channel will represent the continent’s diversity, without discrimination and without prejudice. The women and men who will work at Telesur will do so based on their merits, professionalism and seriousness, not because of their looks.

TPN: Where are you looking for La Television del Sur’s journalists? Does it matter if they are “qualified” by membership in professional organizations or by university degrees, or can you accept people who are qualified only by the quality of their word? Must they have experience in the major media?

Aharonian: We’re looking for personnel in all the Americas, with or without previous experience. We want, above all, to work with young people who are not contaminated by the working style of commercial television, who can develop their talents and do their jobs not only at Telesur, but at five, ten or twenty new Latin American and Caribbean channels, which can really democratize the television spectrum in the Americas.

Also in this section:
The Seguro Social reforms
Interview with Telesur's Aharonian
Business & Economy briefs