By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS – President Hugo Chávez is deemed to be stepping up his campaign of hostility towards broadcasters he considers too critical of his regime, and some of them are not taking it lying down.

Globovisión, the privately-owned 24-hour news channel that has become a prime target of attack by the government, struck back with a detailed report of what it called “laws that will affect journalism in Venezuela” on its website on Wednesday.

Charges of “generic usuary” and other offenses have been brought against Globovisión President Guillermo Zuloaga. This follows a raid on a residence belonging to him on May 21, and the discovery of 24 vehicles there that officials claim were being hoarded for “speculative” purposes. He and several others are banned from leaving the country while they await trial.

The Globovisión website report said the government was studying proposals for as many as eight new laws or modifications of existing legislation. Among these were a reform of the Telecommunications Law, extending the Social Responsibility in Radio and Television Law to cable television stations, a proposed new law on the “exercise of journalism” and, which may amount to the same thing, an entirely new concept of “media crimes,” the website said.

At present, the social responsibility law applies only to terrestrial television channels and radio stations. It was introduced early this decade on the grounds that the government had a duty to ensure that broadcasters cleaned up their act.

At the time, opponents dubbed it the Gag Law. Now, it’s being seen by souls who tend to see little or nothing saintly about the president as the thin end of the wedge.

Opponents of the government’s drive against critical media see it as an attitude of “now or never” towards private broadcasters which could end in converting the government into a censor in the eyes of the world.

Alonso Moleiro, vice president of the National College of Journalists said the government was intent on “dismantling” the influence of the critical media and “shutting up some opinion formers.” But, he warned, it could all backfire badly on the government in the end.

For the president’s supporters or chavistas, there’s a crying need for measures to respond to what they claim are “demands of society” that the media be reined in. They insist that broadcasters in particular have to be “democratized” in the interests of society.

National Assembly Deputy Rosario Pacheco, head of the media committee at the legislature, was unrelenting on the need for this. “In the last 10 years we’ve seen the media behaving contrary to the expressions of the majority and centered on the interests of economic groups,” she declared. “This is in contradiction of the socialist process.”

Communication and Information Minister Blanca Eekhout recently announced that, “We are going to start a strong struggle for the democratization of communication, to break the media latifundio in Venezuela.” Latifundio is a folkloric Latin American colloquialism for the owners of large estates, lording it from their privileged positions over every else, above all the oppressed poor.

For the moment, attention focuses on the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) and its political overlord, Public Works and Housing Minister Diosdado Cabello – arguably the most powerful figure in the government after the president, of whom he has been a close associate and ally for years.

Conatel has launched “administrative procedures” against 240 broadcasters, claiming they have not met legal requirements to keep their affairs in order with the authorities.

On Monday, Cabello confirmed that proceedings had been opened against 50 radio stations, which, he said, could be penalized or even closed down for not abiding by the regulations. His critics claim nobody’s really sure of what the rules are any more since they seem to be changing all the time.

Cabello went on to emphasize that if penalties were imposed, those concerned had the right to defense and it would all depend on what was actually involved. The critics said that by then it would probably be too late.

Nobody has quite forgotten the fate of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which claimed to be the oldest television station in Venezuela until it was abruptly shut down by Chávez in 2007.

He did so at one simple stroke by not renewing RCTV’s broadcasting licence. The critics said the licence actually still had 20 years to run.


RCTV now broadcasts on cable and satellite. But questions abound as to how long that might last now that Chávez has his eye on subscription channels as well as terrestrial stations – and as for radio, last week he called for a “popular” station to be set up.

Nobody should be too surprised by Chávez’s attitude towards the more independently minded broadcasters. As long ago as 2001, he declared that the media were “enemies” of his Bolivarian Revolution. But he is seen to have taken an increasingly tougher line since then, and all the more so in recent months.

There’s an irony mixed up in all this. If anybody could be accused of dominating the airwaves, then arguably it’s the president himself.

Chávez has a regular Sunday broadcast that frequently goes on for hours, and then there are the cadenas or “chains.” These are live broadcasts of his innumerable speeches which terrestrial channels are legally obliged to transmit, anytime, whenever they occur.

Chavistas claim this is all grist to the mill in a very necessary battle to counter the over-weaning influence of media barons. His opponents see it as another example of what they see as his tendency to want to control more or less everything in the country.

For the moment, it is broadcasters who have born the brunt of the government anti-media offensive. Print media, including El Universal and El Nacional, two conservative national dailies which could not be deemed sympathetic to the president by any stretch of the imagination, have largely been left alone in terms of their day-to-day operations. But that, as Chávez himself once said in quite a different context, might just be “for now.”