Latin America's balanced/biased voice
Depending on whom you ask, a new TV news network will either bridge a cultural imbalance, or work as an anti-American tool.
By DAVID ADAMS
Published August 8, 2005
MIAMI - A new international TV news network was born last month and already is making headlines of its own.
Venezuelan-based Telesur (Telesouth) is the first home-grown network in Latin America to broadcast to the region. Its supporters see it as a long overdue effort to address the cultural imbalance in news broadcasting in Latin America.
Critics, however, dismiss it as an anti-American propaganda tool of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.
Either way, it's a sign of the times. In an era of waning respect for U.S. foreign policy, Telesur is further evidence of the United States' dwindling influence in the region.
"Telesur is an initiative against cultural imperialism," declared the station's president, Andres Izarra, during its inauguration. "We launch Telesur with a clear goal to break this communication regime."
To be sure, new voices in the marketplace are always welcome, analysts say. They counterbalance content offered by other global networks, principally CNN, the U.K.'s BBC World, and Spain's TVE (Television Espanola), which broadcast with a North American and European world view. Even Univision, the Spanish-language media giant with a large audience in Latin America, is based in the United States and offers content directed at U.S. Hispanics.
When major world news happens such as the war in Iraq and the recent London bombings, Latin American viewers have no choice but to watch the big foreign networks. The same often applies to big events closer to home in Latin America.
But, will Telesur contribute to the healthy exchange of ideas? Or will it just be a propaganda tool?
The signs are not good.
The station is government-owned, with participation from Venezuela (51 percent), Argentina (20 percent), Cuba (19 percent) and Uruguay (10 percent).
Telesur's director, Uruguayan journalist Aram Aharonian, denies that the channel will simply be a mouthpiece for Chavez, who enjoys a 70 percent popularity rating in recent polls.
"We only accept one kind of censorship - that of the viewer," Aharonian declared. "If they are not satisfied, they will just click the remote control."
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Telesur makes no secret of its politics. Its advisory board is a who's who of international left-wing intellectuals and celebrities.
Telesur's president, Izarra, is a professional journalist who previously worked for CNN, as well as a private Venezuelan TV company. More recently he worked as Venezuela's information minister - until his resignation last month.
His decision to step down from his post is a sign that the Venezuelan government is sensitive to criticism of the channel's lack of political independence.
But the resignation is unlikely to silence critics. Izarra's father, William Izarra, a former air force officer who is now deputy foreign minister, is one of the country's top pro-Chavez ideologues.
He recently gave a speech in which he described Telesur as one of the ways in which Venezuela is defending itself in the undeclared war he said the United States is waging against it.
In this kind of war "the media are more important than (military) divisions," said Izarra Sr., who knows the United States well and studied at Harvard.
U.S. officials recognize that events in Latin America have not gone the way they would like of late. Leftist governments have taken office in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. But they reject suggestions that the rest of the region is cozying up to Chavez.
They note that Brazil declined to join the ownership of Telesur. Unlike Venezuela, the United States enjoys cordial relations with Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.
Washington appears increasingly aware of the need to improve its image overseas. Bush's trusted adviser, Karen Hughes, was last week confirmed as Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy.
But Latin America isn't going to be her priority, and the right political spin may not be enough.
"The problem goes beyond Telesur and Chavez. There's a credibility gap," said Jorge Nef, director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of South Florida.
Critics say U.S. policymakers pay little attention to Latin America. When they do, it's with an overly narrow political focus.
Robert Pastor, a Latin America expert at American University, said: "This administration is trapped in the Castro syndrome. They have completely demonized Chavez, as they have Fidel, and built him up as a David vs. Goliath. The rest of Latin America is just a little bit tired by this style."
Republican U.S. Rep. Connie Mack of Fort Myers last month went as far as proposing legislation for U.S. government broadcasts into Venezuela, to counter Telesur with "accurate news."
Media experts question Mack's approach. "Putting the term "accurate news' in the same sentence with government-sponsored broadcasts is not only an oxymoron, it is disingenuous in the extreme," said John Dinges, a former foreign correspondent in Latin America and professor in radio journalism at Columbia University.
The launch of Telesur should come as no surprise, said Alberto Barrera, co-author of thebiography Chavez Sin Uniforme (Chavez Out of Uniform ). "Chavez is hyperconscious about power and the importance of the media."
To counter criticism in the United States, Chavez set up the Washington-based Venezuela Information Office in 2003. It has since run a campaign of slick ads and an English-language Web site (www.rethinkvenezuela.com)
Barrera points out that during a failed coup attempt in 1992, Chavez captivated TV audiences in a brief appearance. A fiery communicator with Venezuela's poor, Chavez has been called the Ronald Reagan of the left. He has his own weekly TV show, Hello President , every Sunday.
"He's telegenic, he commands the stage with fabulous theatrics ... the perfect media entertainer," Barrera said. And, he adds, like every media star, Chavez need a bigger audience and higher ratings. Hence, Telesur.
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Telesur's professional standards are difficult to judge, as full programming is not yet ready.
The content already is showing a marked ideological bias. An item on Haiti blamed U.N. troops for violence against supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The piece suggested this was part of a plan to allow multinational corporations to continue to use Haitians as slave labor. No alternative point of view was presented.
An item about the recent decision to award the 2012 Olympic Games to London focused on claims by Cuban and Venezuelan sports ministers that the city should have been ruled out because of Britain's involvement in the war in Iraq.
Before the launch, director Aharonian asked critics to withhold judgment until the channel was on the air. The full-scale launch of Telesur is scheduled for September: perhaps by then the critics will be confounded.
--David Adams reported from Miami and can be contacted at dadams@sptimes.com Times correspondent Phil Gunson contributed to this report from Caracas.