Rabid anti-Chavez privately owned TV station, RCTV, has suddenly started broadcasting on satellite DirecTv in Venezuela conclusively exposing the lie that “Chavez had closed it down”.

The Venezuelan government maintained all along that RCTV’s public broadcasting license had not been “renewed” after it expired after 20 years on May 27th 2007 at midnight. Both national and international media continued to use the phrase “closed down” and portray this as a threat to “freedom of speech” in Venezuela and extend this disinformation to back up their unfounded claim that Chavez is “authoritarian, totalitarian and a threat to democracy”.

During this campaign the opposition media produced a survey “proving” that the most popular personality in Venezuela was RCTV Chief Executive, Marcel Granier in yet another failed attempt to undermine the Bolivarian government. This manipulation has also been exposed as the lie it is today, when Félix Seijas Associates – one of the more serious opposition pollsters - published the first serious poll since the December 3rd Presidential election. The result: President Chavez has a 70% approval rating.

On the Oil Wars blog www.oilwars.blogspot.com there is an excellent summary of the RCTV case published on July 8th, as well as a list of the destabilization methods used by an increasingly desperate ex ruling class.

In fact one of the bloggers, “Slave Revolt”, had this pertinent comment to make about lies, manipulations and disinformation in modern day Venezuela as practiced by the private media:

Quote:

No lie is too big--and the goal is continued destablization, so that the oligarchs can once again take the government.

By now, the middle and upper classes are well aware that outright lies are vital for the strategy to win back power for the corporations, oligarchs, and privileged elites. Therefore, standards of 'fair play' and the pretense of objectivity are non sequiturs.

A type of willful ignorance holds sway in the apologists for empire and plutocratic repetition of status quo relations predicated on unearned privilege and exploitation.

Accepting incredible injustice and undemocratic relations of ownership and privilege becomes like breathing--correcting injustice just isn't thought about, and is certainly not a priority for the oligarchs and their adjuncts.

Outright misrepresentations and lies become a function of everyday 'pragmatics'--simply the way issued are distorted or avoided so as to continue parasitical, undemocratic relations.

This is part of the reason that the children of the upper middle class can believe that RCTV has a 'right' to spread disinformation over public airwaves. Indoctrinating the masses with their putrid vision of what is 'news' and 'entertainment', they came to believe, is their class prerogative.

This type of belief entails a deep anti-democratic cynicism--and layers of misinformation and class-biased, self-serving versions of history.
Slave Revolt | 07.09.07 - 8:57 am | #

After the coverage given by the BBC web site to the RCTV case when tension was at its height let’s see if the BBC correspondent in Caracas, James Ingham, has the professional ethics to report that RCTV is still “open” and broadcasting.

We at VSC very much doubt this

Andy Goodall
VSC Coordinator