Venezuela shuts down another couple of anti-Chavez media outlets – the slow creep of restricting media freedom continues.
From The Guardian (UK): “The move followed last week’s introduction of a draft law to jail journalists and broadcasters who ‘harm the interests of the state’, ’cause panic’ or ‘disturb social peace’. Critics denounced the moves as a recipe for censorship. ‘What we are witnessing is the most comprehensive assault on free speech in Venezuela since Chávez came to power,’ said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.”
Josh Heller of Current Comedy (who describes his interests as being ‘Comedy, Viral videos, and Latin American politics’) was watching closely when it was reported last week that licenses of some radio stations were revoked by the government. He contacted a local journalist, Jose Fernando Pepe, to shed a little light on how this was being perceived in Caracas.
Pepe wrote us: “Right now, most TV and radio stations fear for their concession to broadcast. The GRAND majority of these stations just doesn’t touch the subject. If they do, they try to make it reeeeeeaaaaaally objective, so it doesn’t show any leaning. At the end of the day, these people don’t want to lose their concession so they censor themselves to be at peace with everybody.”
Radio is pretty popular in Venezuela, according to Pepe, “..they have really large audiences. In Caracas, people spend few hours a day stuck in traffic, so they listen to radio. In the poorest areas of the country, radio is all they have.”
When the license revoking announcement came out, the Venezuelan blogosphere and Twitter erupted with the rallying cry of #freemediave and claiming that “Radio Muere En Venezuela” (Radio dies in Venezuela). This clever little image was making the rounds on Tumblr.
However as we were trying to contact people through Twitter we found that many accounts were set to private. Pepe explained: “People here are paranoid of who’s reading, who’s listening and who’s watching. It is well known that government illegally record private phone calls, view private email accounts, sneak into private chats… well, now you get where the paranoia comes from. So, people block their accounts to avoid any “surprise” prosecution for some weird, made-up accusation.”
So what’s next for Venezuela? Chavez doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but opposition media does. Chavez continues to be able to pass legislation harassing media outlets that disagree with him – and he reportedly has his sights on Globovision, the last remaining big opposition television station. What happens as sources of information become more limited? Will we see an explosion of alternative media sources like The Caracas Chronicles?
If you live down in Venezuela, or have some light to shed on this issue – let us know.
August 22nd, 2009 at 5:24 PM
Chavez has done some good things, but not enough to cover all the bad things hes done or how badly he has screwed up the country. And taking away freedom of speech is the last straw, people need to think about how their lifes are going to be if their freedom of speech is taken away. They should take the time to research that and think about the road their going down and do something about it. Sometimes what people dont understand is that there is way more of them than there is Chavez and his millitary alone. And I garenty you that not all of the people in the millitary agree so the more people stand up the more people will join. But it’s not an easy task.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:21 AM
[...] I use tumblr, to keep tapped into the pulse of the world’s meme-o-sphere. I follow a lot of people in New York and Los Angeles. Somehow I follow lot’s of Venezuelans. This is how I discovered the unrest in the online community over crackdowns on media by Hugo Chavez. It wasn’t that funny s…. [...]
February 7th, 2010 at 12:16 AM
Watch the super bowl online here.