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Venezuela's Contrarian TV Station Survives on YouTube
carlos_J writes "Ars Technica is running a story about RCTV, a Venezuelan television station whose broadcast license was refused renewal by the government. In response, the station turned to YouTube to get its message out. Says Ars, 'El Observador clips have been seen 175,000 times since May 28, and the channel is currently the most-subscribed channel of the week. While putting the station's shows on YouTube is an excellent idea, YouTube still lacks anything near the reach of over-the-air broadcasts. But the use of the site to avoid censorship is growing, and it's not hard to imagine a day in the near future when the site (or sites like it) becomes as essential as local TV stations. As that happens, YouTube will come into even more conflicts with governments that have an interest in controlling what their citizens see, It's already happening--Thailand's king, for instance, has a thing for iPods but isn't too keen on YouTube. Will Hugo Chavez show more tolerance? '"
Magic 8-ball says: "Not likely".
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
uh... he'd be the guy who shut down the live television channel
(puts on thinking cap)
hmmm...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was always told that the revolution would not be televised.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Yeah, you go to YouTube for the counter-revolution but three hours later you're watching old music videos and wondering where the hell the time went.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
A joke of a country that takes better care of its poor than the United States.
Fine, fine. How about we take your computer and redirect the money you spend on broadband and software and give it to the poor? After all, using your money to give food and shelter to the homeless is much more important than your "need" to post on slashdot, yes?
And please don't think I'm defending Chavez himself in any ways, but let's remember that Thatcher refused to renew the license of Thames Television. True, their license was lost for capitalist reasons (not being profitable enough), and RCTV was removed for political reasons, but many would argue that those reasons are not really all that different.
And let's be honest about this. In America in 2007, if CNN started taking an active role in the violent removal of Bush (who, while contraversial, was democratically elected), how long do you think the Bush administration would put up with that?
Chavez is authoritarian, heavy-handed and a bit megalomaniacal. But sometimes all of us need to take a good look in the mirror about the state of democracy here before we get all high and mighty about defending democracy elsewhere.
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul." --George Bernard Shaw
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
"Communism is man's exploitation of man. Capitalism is just the opposite."
It's good that youTube is there to provide an outlet to anyone who has a video they'd like the world to see, and I'm sure the fans of that channel's shows will be happy to see them there. But considering that the station supported a coup to overthrow the democratically elected president of their nation, I can't blame him for taking their antennas away.
You can't take the sky from me...
Okay, I think that refusing to renew the license of this broadcaster was a bad move. BUT, under the legal theory that controls this sort of thing, it's pretty much a no-brainer.
i n_Venezuela#Events_leading_up_to_the_coup
Those broadcast licenses are *supposed* to be held in the public interest. This TV station supported a military coup against the democratically elected government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Attempted_coup_
That's a pretty unambiguous abuse of the public trust. Can you imagine what would happen to NBC's affiliate broadcast licenses if they supported a military coup against our government? If they weren't tried for treason and shot, they certainly wouldn't be allowed to keep broadcasting.
Which brings us to the subject of restraint - actually, Chavez has shown a remarkable degree of restraint so far against those who tried to overthrow him militarily. They haven't even filed charges against the military officers - the man that the coup tried to install as President was Chavez' opponent in following last Venezuelan election.
I seriously doubt that he's going to try and block Youtube.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
While the suppression of dissent is always dishonourable, the fact remains that RCTV actively supported the coup against Chavez a few years back. FAIR has some details. Now I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that if, some TV network in the United States tried to incite the masses to revolt against George W. Bush, and the revolt was put down, the broadcast licences for that network would be cancelled. At least Chavez isn't doing what the Russians have been doing lately.... "not" killing reporters. While I still have deep concerns over issues of freedom of speech and the press in Venezuela, I still applaud Mr. Chavez in taking strides to combat poverty in his own country, and in the United States through his heating oil donations.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
Rather, it will be posted on YouTube.
I wish that were true, but it's a bunch of crap. Barring the use of fairly extreme measures on your part to preserve security, it's easy enough for the government to find you and send some men around to cart you off to someplace highly pixelated on google maps.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I love all the liberals who are now trying to defend their anti-Capitalist hero Chavez on this point by claiming that since the news station was involved in trying to oust Chavez before, Chavez is justified. But they only think that because they think Chavez is a priori a good leader. If it was a tv station that was trying to oust a leader they didn't like -- say, impleach Bush -- they'd be all for it and declare any pull of the license as retaliatory and censorship. Come on, people, stand up for your principles for a change!
The actions of others don't dictate actions you made. We don't arrest or kill people who say I wish so and so was dead to find out later that someone killed him for you.
King or not, it is a free area of the world. You can't be free when the ruler stops you from your free speech. you cannot take anything that his supporters might do and automatically associate it to a person not participating in it. If so the far left wackos out there would make everyone guilty of some stupidity. It goes the same for the far right.
I can't belive someone in this day is even suggesting the thought of holding a third person responcible for someone elses free speech.
Let's pretend the government owns the airwaves as a public resource and licenses its use, ie the license to use the airwaves is granted by the government, not anyone's God-given right. Let's pretend a TV station who holds a government license for use of public airwaves sponsored a coup against a democratically-elected government. Let's pretend that coup attempt failed. Wouldn't the rule of law require that the people who attempted to overthrow the government be held accountable? Wouldn't a reasonable repercussion be that the TV station involved in the coup have its license revoked for its attempted overthrow of the government? Wouldn't it even seem especially charitible of the government to refrain from taking special action and simply refuse to renew the license when it came up for renewal?
Because that's exactly what happened here.
I have no sympathy for this station. Freedom of speech, my ass.
Tyrants almost always disguise their lust for power as sympathy for the persecuted and downtrodden. Castro did it in the 50's; Chavez is doing the same thing now.
I hope our youth are paying attention to what's happening in Venezuela right now, because I think the next 20 years will be an invaluable lesson in how a dictator-to-be dupes a populace with promises of govenrment-provided prosperity and national unity. In other words, he's going to steal from the minority rich to buy the support of the majority poor, and anyone who dissents will be silenced.
Pay attention, folks! Dictators haven't changed much since Lenin, despite each's promises of a socialist utopia. Maybe one of these centuries we'll recognize these tyrants before we let them rise to power and exploit their people.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I know it all looks rather dictatoreque of Chavez to refuse to renew their licence, but if any western media channel behaved in the way they did, normal regulatory bodies would have shut them down long ago. Imagine the bias of Fox news multiplied by 100 and you begin to get the picture. During the coup attempt against the Chavez government in 2002 the news channels deliberately manipulated news footage to make it look like Chavez supporters were shooting people. What do you think would happen to a US TV Station if it did something like that and the whole Channel was behind it? I should imagine if the BBC had supported a foreign-backed coup against the democratically elected government of the UK, they would be shut down as well.
What Venezuela needs is effective media monitors like Ofcom, perhaps with international observers. Also, the reason we keep hearing so much about Chavez is not because of his actions, it is because he is not a US ally. If he was a US ally and was doing these things, the media would be largely disinterested. That is important to realise. For example, much was made of his enabling act, yet the same kind of act was used by several previous Venezuelan presidents. The difference being that they were US allies and he isn't.
Chavez has also been given de facto dictatorial powers, so the law is de facto and de jure, whatever Chavez says it is, so of course "it's legal". But is it right?
If Chavez was really winning the battle of ideas and making things better in his country, he wouldn't have to oppress his oponents. Right now he's a genuinely popular leader, but he's going to end up driving Venezuela into the ground.
Given recent decisions by numerous web content providers I would think YouTube will be blocking the rogue broadcasters after short blackout of the site by the offended country.
The minute YouTube began actively filtering submissions (in other situations) they opened themselves to accountability for all submissions.
I have to think that user tagging/moderation would have been a better way to go... That type of system is actually the main reason I prefer this news site over most others. It allows the website to actually take a stand on many types of speech issues instead of being forced to bow down to whatever entity gets pissy with them.
Regards.
The fastest route to bringing Venezuela back to reality is simply to stop buying Citgo products. Dry up the money. Dry up Chavez.
Even if a Citgo boycott did have an effect on Chavez...
While Chavez can be an enormous asshat at times, Venezuela looks like a human-rights paradise
compared to plenty of other oil-producing nations.
Redirecting your money to one of them isn't really the answer either.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
But as you should probably know, the Chavez - Citgo link, is an urban myth.
There is such a thing as too much skepticism.
From the wiki:
"Citgo Petroleum Corporation or Citgo, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company"
"Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) is the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil, as well as exploration and production of natural gas. PDVSA dominates the oil industry of Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
PDVSA purchased 50% of the United States gasoline brand Citgo from Southland Corporation in 1986 and the remainder in 1990."
So yeah... I think you can buy the "Chavez-Citgo link."
Now, that doesn't mean boycotting Citgo is a good idea. First of all, as my freak above pointed out, it simply redirects money to arguably worse governments that make money off oil. Second, oil companies actually sell to each other. If an Exxon station doesn't have enough while Citgo has too much, Exxon will buy up Citgo's and sell it, and they'll both be happy. (Sorry to put the damper on anyone's delusion about the nature of "competition" in a market economy.)
Due to the fungible nature of oil, it's really hard to boycott any one provider without a lot more coordination than you can hope to rally in this case.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
is that hugo chavez's socialist policies are supported by oil revenue... oil revenue mostly from the great capitalist satan to the north
it's ironic for both countries. for the usa, it is ironic that it is american dollars via their gas guzzling suvs that fuels this vociferous critic of the usa
for venezuela, it is ironic for the same reason. there is no inherent strength in socialist economic policies. but it doesn't matter when your economy is enjoying massive inflows of foreign wealth... foreign capitalist wealth. if only castro were so lucky to be sitting on a giant fountain of oil, eh? but castro is enjoying a foreign inflow of aid himself... from chavez... who again, gets it from the usa via oil. its hilarious
without american dollars via oil revenue, there would be no chavez. chavez is just a giant gasbag demagogue. but i don't mind him. if he uses all of that oil money to actually aid the poor, rather than going to a few rich venezuelans, well then good for chavez. for doing that, he can demonify the usa all he wants. bush raped the pope, bush drinks oil from iraqi children's skulls, blah blah blah, whatever. let him hurl his invectives forever. it's just a lot of hot air, demagoguery in the service of solidfying political base via antipathy towards the usa. who cares. keep aiding the poor chavez, and you can say whatever you want about bush
i mean its not like he's using his oil revenue to fund reactionary wahabbi islamic madrassas that fuels fundamentalist islamic terrorism that revisits american shores in the form of 9/11, right?
now what country would that be? (COUGH our good "friends" the saudis COUGH)
hey america: you like your big oil guzzling suv huh?
well, via $, it brings you chavez, via $ it brings you osama bin laden, and via global warming it brings you hurricane katrina
still like your gas guzzling suv dear american suburbanite?
your paying a pretty penny for it, way above and beyond that soon to be $4/ gallon pricetag
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But first, take a ride around Haiti so you'll know where you're swearing you're in looks like.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
"Mission Acomplished" (probably dressed as a paratrooper in a chinese aircraft carrier, a la Bush).
RCTV was the channel with the most geographical reach (nearly 100% of the country). Here in Venezuela, the "regional TV station" is a very recent phenomenon. Most of the TV stations are repeaters of national chains, and being the oldest, RCTV had the most coverage.
By replacion RCTV with a new station, Chavez acomplishes two goals, get out of the way a big nuance, and replacing that signal with on he can easily control (he is not controlling it yet, but now is quite easy).
In a country were internet penetration is low, and Broadband even lower, and where internet is mostly used by people who already opose Chavez, loosing the free/broadcast opposing medium is quite a blow for disension (I will not YET claim is a loss in freedom of expression).
Anyway, as I sit here (in Maracay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maracay) configuring my new laptop, I receive (Radio, MSN, SMS) reports of protests all over the country... But do not be fooled, these are not riots (thanks the lord), and Chavez already survived a general 3 month strike. Therefore, in about two weeks the protests will subside, the thing will be forgoten, and the same university students who are protesting now will be watching RCTV in YouTube using the campus broadband...
Is a pitty...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
minorty rich is a tyranny all in itself
in any society of wide income disparity, that is, a small pool of rich and a large pool of poor, there is always this essential story:
1. minority rich angers poor with self-serving policies
2. populist rides poor's discontent to revolutionary power
3. populist enriches his cronies, ossifies, and creates a new minority rich class
rinse and repeat forever
this story has held true from the french revolution to chavez (well, since before the french revolution with various peasant revolts, unsuccessful and successful), and will continue for many years to come
UNLESS:
a strong vibrant middle class emerges. only through a strong middle class does a country enjoy social and political stability
such as the usa. you have various wackadoodles in the usa talking about revolution, but such a thing is basically impossible amongst the suburban suv driving starbucks drinking set, which is, the majority. there will be no revoltuion in the usa, ever, UNLESS:
take note usa: rising ranks of the poor and ultrarich. the usa is trending back towards an unjust society: the middle class shrinks, the rich grow richer, the poor ranks rise
the middle class should be dominant and huge. only such a country can be stable and prosperous and truly just
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, Chavez likely will build jails. Check this page out for links to stories that have made it out of Venezuela: http://hrw.org/doc?t=americas&c=venezu Or this one: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR5301319 97?open&of=ENG-VEN
Or how about here for some more on the gloriously free democracy that Chavez has crafted:
http://www.humanrightsfoundation.org/
Oh, wait for it...more:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/6/17/1 5422/6410
Anyone who cannot see that Chavez is setting up a dictatorship, and that he will not tolerate dissent is either stupid, or willfully blind.
Yeah, what a dictator. He was overthrown in a coup, and what did he do to the *lead organizer* of the coup (Pedro Carmona**) when he got back into power? Kill him on the spot? No, even worse: he was put under *house arrest*. Such strict, brutal house arrest that he was able to flee to Colombia. What a brutal dictator Chavez is!
Imagine how the US would react if Bush was overthrown in a coup and then got back into power. What do you think would happen to anyone even remotely related to the coup?
** By comparison, what was that great icon of freedom, the US-backed coup leader Pedro Carmona doing shortly after overthrowing the government? Why, his first acts were to dissolve the legislature, the judiciary, and abolish the constitution that was overwhelmingly approved in referrendum. But, in the strange world of the Right, he's a democratic hero, and Chavez is an evil dictator.
"Now," she thought, watching the dolphins adjust their bowties, "might be a good time to up my medication."
Venezuela are controlled by oligarchs who have no love for Chavez
I'd say it's pretty hard to love Chavez if he's busy throwing your peers in prison and seizing business that you own or have a stake in. Chavez is hugely popular because he's sticking it to the rich guys and the Americans, but after a while, when this doesn't make the life of the common man any better than it was before Chavez (or actually makes it worse after private and foreign investment has dried up and gone to friendlier countries), then Chavez will just be another failed socialist dictatorial demogogue holding onto power by force and oppression.
For God's sake, move back to reality here. The guy's a socialist. He hates Bush and America's current foreign policy. Beyond that, there's nothing much special about him.
Seriously. Let's look at some other countries in the region concerning opposition TV stations, shall we? (re, Diana Cariboni)
1. Colombia:
"In October 2004, the Uribe administration closed the public Instituto de Radio y Televisión (Inravisión),? which aired "documentaries that were often awkward for the government."
2. Honduras:
"President Manuel Zelaya ordered all TV and radio stations to broadcast 10 daily one-hour programmes during prime time, starting Monday, to counteract what he called "misinformation" on his administration provided by the press.
"Honduran law stipulates that nationally broadcast messages (known as "cadena nacional") can only be used to call elections or in case of natural disasters or emergencies."
3. Nicaragua:
In 2002, during the administration of Enrique Bolaños, the radio station La Poderosa, aligned with former president Arnoldo Alemán, had their equipment seized without any legal proceedings.
4. Venezuelan opposition:
"[I]n 2003, Caracas Mayor Alfredo Peña, an outspoken Chávez opponent, also closed down the community station Catia TV for several days."
5. Mexico:
Oaxacan newpaper Diario Noticias, which "is openly critical of [?] Governor Ulises Ruiz, has been the target of attacks since 2005, including assaults on its journalists and attempts to evict the staff from the paper's offices."
6. Uruguay:
In 1994 President Luis Alberto Lacalle "stripped the CX 44 Radio Panamericana station of its licence after it urged the public to take part in a
demonstration."
Now, hey, let's go back to Venezuela. Let's look at that great and honorable privately owned Venezuelan media system. Back during the coup, the station was nothing but nonstop pro-coup propaganda: video after video of the anti-chavez side with hardly a shot of the pro-chavez side, with constantly mentioning reports of Chavez supporters shooting at opponents and none of the reports of the opposite. When the counter-coup happened? They avoided news and played soap operas and the like instead. Before and after the coup? Potshots at Chavez all the time.
How did the opposition get ahold of all of the major networks? Because the opposition owns most of the country, period. They're the same "upper class" that's been around for hundreds of years, dating all the way back to Spanish colonialism.
"Now," she thought, watching the dolphins adjust their bowties, "might be a good time to up my medication."
Acutally, you can say he is brutal. According to the Amnesty International 2006 Report for Venezuela, torture, extrajudicial executions, and enforced disappearances continue to go unpunished. These types of actions are hardly taken by the benevolent, fatherly type of "liberator" Chavez likes to portray. Simon Bolivar would be rolling in his grave if he knew Chavez renamed Venezuela the Bilovaran Republic. Even the Special Rapporteur for the Organization of American States filed a report that harshly criticized the Chavez regime's targetting of journalists, including beatings, threats, and incarceration. Face it, he ain't no O'Higgins or Bolivar. He is a thug in a good suit and calls himself the President.
Well, citing examples from other countries that also have horrible human rights records does not make my assertion that he is a dictator any less credible. As Amnesty International reports in it's 2006 country report for Venezuala, there are some serious human rights violations going on there. Sure, Columbia, Honduras, Mexico and Uruguay are not nice places. They too have their fair share of extrajudicial execustions and disappearances. That doesn't mean Chavez is any less a dictator than I assert. As to the pre-coup media, and their position backing it, I am not defending it. But Chavez pretends to be running a deomocracy when, in fact he is running a centralized police state. Trying to defend him by saying "Oh yeah, well there are worse out there" is like saying turnips are better than rutebegas.
but if any western media channel behaved in the way they did, normal regulatory bodies would have shut them down long ago. Imagine the bias of Fox news multiplied by 100 and you begin to get the picture.
Forgive me, but what part of:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
do you not understand?
During the coup attempt against the Chavez government in 2002 the news channels deliberately manipulated news footage to make it look like Chavez supporters were shooting people. What do you think would happen to a US TV Station if it did something like that and the whole Channel was behind it?
Well, the factuality of this claim is in question. Assuming that we're talking about the same deaths during the coup (we might not be, of course), at least Freedom House agrees with the claim.
What would happen to a U.S. station if it incorrectly claimed government officials were involved in illegal murders? Well, we can already see how CNN was treated. Even if they hadn't issued a retraction they would have kept their broadcast license. Take a look around at all of the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense - where is the heavy hand of the U.S. government to silence it or keep it off the airwaves? Excluding the minds of the paranoid and delusional, nowhere. The U.S. government allows it. Why? Because we allow free speech and this is, in spite of all the nonsense we hear about, a free country. If anything the U.S. greatly benefits from having a free market of ideas, which inevitably includes numerous lemons.
What Venezuela needs is effective media monitors like Ofcom, perhaps with international observers.
Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Let's bring the magically impartial people who, unlike the rest of the world, do not bring in bias to their thought process. Then let's make them the ultimate gate keepers of what the people get to hear. And instead of censors, let's call them "media monitors" or "observers". That would be double plus good! No need to let the people hear those pesky claims of others and evaluate sources. They're too dumb for that sort of thing.
Also, the reason we keep hearing so much about Chavez is not because of his actions, it is because he is not a US ally. If he was a US ally and was doing these things, the media would be largely disinterested.
As an American who has lived in Latin America before (2 years in Argentina - slums of Buenos Aires, 3 months Chile - rather nice parts of Santiago), I must agree that media coverage of Latin America is lacking in the U.S.. Most people simply don't care about the area here in the states (prior to traveling to Argentina, numerous people asked me what part of Africa it was in), and that leads to little coverage unless something bad happens like, say, a country turning from democracy to a dictatorship very, very quickly.
We can play with the red herring of "people only dislike Venezuela because he dislikes the U.S.!" all we want. No need to defend the U.S. on this note - it has in the past, does in the present, and will in the future associate with many unsavory characters. That's the way international relations work, and if you can find a single country that hasn't done the same then please let me know. The question is not so much one of International Relations in my book as it is a matter of domestic government. That said, consider the following:
One claim against the station is that it allegedly helped a military coup, making it in the view of many "bad". If that's the case, then what about Chavez, who staged his own failed military coup in 1992? Was that not