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Rally to defense of Venezuela’s media after RCTV’s closure

by Reporters Without Borders

On May 28 Reporters Without Borders called for international condemnation of President Hugo Chávez’s decision not to renew the license of Venezuela’s oldest TV station, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), which was finally forced to stop broadcasting at midnight the previous night.

“The closure of RCTV, which was founded in 1953, is a serious violation of freedom of expression and a major setback to democracy and pluralism,” the press freedom organization said. “President Chávez has silenced Venezuela’s most popular TV station and the only national station to criticize him, and he has violated all legal norms by seizing RCTV’s broadcast equipment for the new public TV station that is replacing it.”

Reporters Without Borders continued: “The grounds given for not renewing RCTV’s license, including its support, along with other media, for the April 2002 coup attempt, are just pretexts. Other privately-owned TV stations that supported the coup attempt have not suffered the same fate because they subsequently adopted a subservient attitude towards the regime.”

Directly or indirectly, President Chávez now controls almost all the broadcast media. RCTV’s closure is not, as he would have people believe, a mere administrative measure. It is a political move designed to reinforce his hegemony over the news media.

This attack on media pluralism is just the latest in a long series of press freedom violations in Venezuela that have included attacks on hundreds of journalists in recent years, a “media social responsibility” law that restricts their programming, criminal code amendments increasing the penalties for press offences, publication of a list of journalists who allegedly “sold out to US interests,” and verbal threats by Chávez against foreign journalists.

“We appeal to the international community to actively condemn this use of force and to defend what remains of the independent media in Venezuela,” Reporters Without Borders added.

The threat to RCTV surfaced just eight days after Chávez’s reelection as president, when communication and information minister William Lara announced on 11 December 2006 that the renewal of its licence would be put to a referendum. President Chávez’s decision to terminate its license without bothering with a referendum was announced 17 days later.

The Venezuelan supreme court put an end to all further discussion when it ruled on 18 May that the appeal presented by RCTV on 9 February was “inadmissible.”

Bernal, Freedom of expression again
Heck, No sense of reality about Venezuela
Committee to Protect Journalists, Chávez attacks freedom of the press
Munini, Recovering electromagnetic space from the plutocrats
Reporters Without Borders, Defend freedom of the press against Chávez
Smith, Correa should think twice before prosecuting for insults
Wayne, Looking at Cuba without the distorted Miami lenses
Jackson, What to Do about Cuba?

Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Europe's declining influence in Latin America

Silié, Following the European Union's example

Leis, Ten factors in quality education

Sirias, Deadly poison from China