Venezuelan Community Media Workers Hold Counter Summit to IAPA

Caracas, September 22^nd 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - Journalists, reporters and media workers representing independent, alternative, community and public media from across Latin America met in Caracas in a counter-summit to protest the so-called "Emergency Forum on Freedom of Speech" that was organized by the Inter-American Press Association and the Venezuelan Press Bloc over September 18-19.

During the forum at the Lido hotel in Caracas, IAPA representatives claimed there had been a "major setback" for freedom of expression in Latin America over the past year and that Venezuela was providing a model for other Latin American governments to follow on this path.

"Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are examples of states that have promoted laws to restrict press freedom, and Argentina is now discussing a similar law," IAPA Vice President Gonzalo Marroquin alleged.

In July, the Venezuelan National Assembly reformed the Telecommunications Law to limit the concentration of private radio and television ownership and specified that broadcasting concessions are not inheritable property.

The government also moved to regulate the use of the public airwaves, closing down a number of private radio stations that were operating without a valid license.

Diosdado Cabello, the head of Venezuela's National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL), said the measures had nothing to do with limiting freedom of expression. Cabello pointed out that those affected could continue to broadcast via internet or cable.

Venezuelan Communications Minister Blanca Eeckhout, who spoke at the counter-summit, said that the IAPA forum was part of a campaign, in alliance with U.S. imperialism, to discredit the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other progressive governments in the region.

Eeckhout, who is also the former president of Catia TV, a community television station in Caracas, detailed the role of the private media during the short-lived opposition coup against Chavez between April 11-13, 2002.

During the coup, Catia TV, state-owned VTV, as well as numerous community radio and television stations were violently shut down, while the private media imposed a blackout on events unfolding around the country, playing soap operas and cartoons instead, Eeckhout explained.

The IAPA statement on April 12 failed to condemn these violations of freedom of expression. Instead, it welcomed the installation of the coup government as a step that would "hopefully...ensure the restoration of true democracy," Eeckhout pointed out.

The IAPA is an organisation that represents media owners and corporate business interests, not journalists, the minister continued. Eeckhout added that the aim of the IAPA's "Emergency Forum" is "to cast shadows of doubt and confusion about the democratic, participatory and protagonist model, which is developing true freedom and justice for Venezuelans and is promoted by the revolutionary government of President Hugo Chavez."

Responding to Eeckhout's comments, Marroquin said, "We haven't come to destabilize any government, that's ridiculous, we're not a political party."

However, in an investigative report for Venezuelanalysis.com, independent reporter Michael Fox detailed the political bias of the IAPA. The report revealed links between some of the IAPA's key members and Latin America's right wing dictatorships, including that of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba (1952-1959), and the leaders of the coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.

More recently, the IAPA has been linked to the military coup in Honduras which ousted the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya on June 28. Jorge Canahuati, the majority owner of two of the pro-coup newspapers in Honduras, La Prensa and El Heraldo, is also the president of the IAPA's international commission.

In addition, Roberto Micheletti, who was installed by the coup as de facto president, is the owner of the newspaper La Tribuna. One of his associates at the newspaper is Edgardo Dumas Rodriguez, a Honduran representative to the IAPA.

In a scenario comparable to the 2002 coup in Venezuela, critical media outlets in Honduras were occupied by the military during and after the June 28 coup, while the majority of private television stations played cooking shows, soap operas or cartoons and later reported that a "legal transition" had taken place.

Under the coup regime journalists have been threatened and detained, many media outlets have been shut down, constitutional rights suspended, nation-wide military curfews imposed, and the broadcasting teams of Latin America-wide station Telesur and Venezuelan state TV channel VTV expelled from Honduras at gunpoint.

When asked why the IAPA has not condemned the coup or failed to criticise Honduran media outlets which openly support a regime that crushes free speech, IAPA President Enrique Santos (owner of Colombia's El Tiempo) responded on July 4 that while there may "possibly be newspapers that have been partisans of the change of government," this was no reason for IAPA to "tell them what to think... the IAPA is not a monolithic organisation, where all partners have to have the same political criteria."

Commenting on the IAPA's claims about press freedom in Latin America, Nelson del Castillo, secretary general 0f the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP), said, "as far as Latin America is concerned, the IAPA has been an accomplice in barbarity and has fathered the derailment of democratic processes... all they want is to violate peoples rights and keep them in the most backward situation politically, economically, and socially."

Although public media has been greatly expanded and community media has thrived over the past ten years in Venezuela, the majority of the radio, television and print media remains in private hands, and is vehemently opposed to the Chavez government.

Gonzalo Gomez, an independent journalist and co-founder of the Venezuelan political news and analysis website www.aporrea.org, told the counter-summit that in order to "really counter the offensive of capital and imperialism, the people must take communication into their own hands, since there is no such thing as people power without popular communication."

Published on Sep 22nd 2009 at 5.07pm