CounterPunch: Chavez & Free Speech

I like a lot of what Hugo Chavez is doing, but somethings (the personalizing of the Bolivarian Revolution for example) make me leery. Not so much that I fear he's the slavering wannabe-tyrant that the bush II regime and its media allies paint him as, but just because he'll betray the principles of democracy in his struggle with his enemies in Venezuela.

There's currently a debate on Chavez's committment to free speech taking place on EnMasse on this very issue. There's worries that by refusing to renew the concession of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) is a sign of incipient totalitarianism.

George Ciccarielo-Maher on CounterPunch argues that concerns about this issue are unfounded:

"However, the idea that media concessions entail responsibility is not at all unique. Even the U.S. FCC maintains a similar position, notwithstanding the swift de-regulation during the early years of the Reagan administration. As we all know, the FCC maintains certain content restrictions on broadcasting (more strict, it should be mentioned, than in many European nations), and is not unwilling to silence those who infringe upon these restrictions.

...

And we are only speaking here of so-called "obscenity," which doesn't even compare to the charges against RCTV, which as is well-known, actively participated in a conspiracy which brought about several deaths and used those deaths to provoke a coup in April of 2002. This was followed by an equally active participation in the oil sabotage of December of the same year, which crippled the Venezuelan economy toward the same end.
While this provides little justification, it is worth mentioning how many FBI visits have been occasioned by "threats" against George W. Bush, despite the fact that these have been isolated and individual incidents, not the sort of organized rebellion and premeditated murder endorsed by the Venezuelan media.


And yet opposition media outlets attempt to paint the issue of the non-renewal of a concession as the violation of a human right. This "right" presumably means the right of a large private media conglomerate to have unrestricted access to a public good, to use and abuse this public good for profit without acquiring any responsibility. "

.. And etc., ... it's quite a decent article. I hope my many, many, readers will do CounterPunch a favour and boost their hit stats to go read it!