[Peace-discuss] Latest round in the US/Venezuela media war.

[Phil Stinard]

Here is one of the salvos in the ongoing media war between the US and 
Venezuela, a letter from Venezuela's Mininster of Communication and 
Information to a Washingon Post political hack.  I was fortunate enough to 
take a participatory role in this round.  Here is the version posted on 
axisoflogic.com.  The original appeared on vheadline.com.

--Phil

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16556.shtml

Venezuela's Media Minister Andres Izarra replies to the Washington Post

By Philip Stinard translating for Andres Izarra
Apr 2, 2005, 14:15

Editor's Note:  The Washington Post has an ongoing campaign to malign the 
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, their constitution, people and their 
president. We have every reason to believe that the WP lacks the 
journalistic integrity to print this letter written by Andres Izarra who 
holds a position similar to a cabinet member in the Bush Whitehouse.  The WP 
and the rest of the corporate media has their "thumb on the scale" of news 
and information on Venezuela. Action! Please do what you can to distribute 
Izarra's letter to your e-mail lists and media outlets! - Les Blough, Editor

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Venezuelan Minister of Communication & Information has replied to 
Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl, who stated in an article published 
March 28 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5755-2005Mar27.html)  that 
in Venezuela, journalists are persecuted and the press is censored.

Diehl also spoke of the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio & Television 
as a punitive instrument that won't permit the independent exercise of 
journalism.

In Andres Izarra's response, we find a story of rights violated in the 
United States, and attacks against the freedom of information in that 
country. In conclusion, the press is freer in Venezuela than in the United 
States.

The following is the letter (translated) in its entirety:

Mr. Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
Washington DC USA

Mister Diehl:

It's impossible to believe that a journalist at a newspaper as important as 
the Washington Post is so badly informed as you appear to be in your article 
"Chavez's Censorship: Where Disrespect Can Land You in Jail," published 
March 28.

You can believe, if you wish, that Venezuela used to be "the most prosperous 
and stable democracy in Latin America" (with 80% of the population in 
extreme poverty, civil strife, and military uprisings), put you can't write, 
without lying, that in Venezuela, journalists are persecuted and the press 
is censored, because there isn't a single case that supports what you say.

You say the truth when you affirm that "some newspapers and television 
stations openly sided with attempts to oust the president via coup, strike 
or a national referendum." Before being Minister of Information and 
Communication, I worked as news director for RCTV, an important private TV 
station in Venezuela. Immediately after the coup of April 2002 against 
President Hugo Chavez, when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the 
streets demanding the return of their elected president, RCTV and other 
private channels decided not to report on this civil uprising, preferring to 
broadcast cartoons and old movies. Since I couldn't bring myself to 
participate in this censorship, I resigned.

As journalist Duncan Campbell reported for the (London) Guardian, "The five 
principal TV channels gave publicity spots to those who convened the 
demonstrations that supported the coup." Moreover, the principal media 
owners in Venezuela assured Dictator Carmona, "We can't guarantee the army's 
loyalty, but we can promise the media's support" (see "Coup and 
Counter-Coup," The Economist Global Agenda, April 16, 2002).

The private media promoted all of the campaigns to discredit President 
Chavez and his policies. For example, during the petroleum industry sabotage 
of Christmas 2002-2003, more than 13,000 political propaganda advertisements 
were broadcast in a two month period in order to "animate an economically 
devastating and socially destabilizing general strike directed at 
overthrowing Chavez. (These ads) energetically promoted opposition leaders, 
while at the same time defaming the President and ignoring news that favored 
him" (see COHA Investigation Memorandum. The Venezuelan Media: More Than 
Words in Play," Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Press Memorandum 03.18, 
April 30, 2003). However, despite all this, the openly conspiratorial media 
were not persecuted, neither then, nor now.

You are lying to your readers, Mister Diehl, when you say, "Beginning this 
month journalists or other independent activists accused by the government 
of the sort of offenses alleged by Izarra can be jailed without due process 
and sentenced to up to 30 years," because you are confusing the law that 
protects children from obscenity in the broadcast media with the laws on 
national security and the President's security, which are more strict in the 
United States.

US Code, Title 18, Section 871, "Threats against the President and 
presidential successors," prohibits any offense or threat made against the 
President of the United States. Examples include July 2, 1996, when two 
people were arrested by the secret service for shouting insults at President 
Clinton ("You suck and those boys died...") on the occasion of an attack 
against a military installation in Saudi Arabia in which 19 US soldiers 
died; or a minister who was arrested for saying "God will hold you to 
account" to President Clinton, concerning his decision not to prohibit a 
certain kind of abortion.

US Code, Title 18, Section 1752(a)(1)(ii) declares that it is a crime to 
intentionally enter a restricted zone during a presidential visit, and it 
has been used to arrest more than 1,800 demonstrators during the Republican 
Convention in August of 2004, despite the fact that the demonstrators were 
several blocks from President Bush's location; it was also used to arrest a 
gentleman for carrying a sign against war on October 24, 2002, during Bush's 
visit to Ohio; also arrested was a dead soldier's mother for wearing an 
anti-war t-shirt during a speech by First Lady Laura Bush in New Jersey; and 
a couple in West Virginia was arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts during 
a rally.

You know, Mister Diehl, that the Patriot Act together with an Executive 
Order give President Bush the power to determine when a person represents a 
threat to the United States. If the person is a US citizen, he can be 
detained for an indefinite length of time without rights, be declared an 
enemy of the state, and even lose his citizenship. If the person is not a US 
citizen, he can be detained without any rights and be brought before a 
secret military tribunal without anyone, not even his family members, 
finding out. If a foreigner in the US says that "Bush is the Devil," he can 
be imprisoned and end up in Guantanamo.

Your interest in having people believe that in Venezuela, journalists are 
threatened like foreign agents, is understandable due to the number of 
agents that act as journalists, in both Venezuela and the US, to diffuse 
opinions concocted by the US State Department:

Declassified documents from the State Department (from the NGO National 
Security Archives) concerning the US Office of Public Diplomacy, managed by 
Otto Reich during the 1970's, demonstrate that the Washington Post was one 
of the newspapers used by the US government to spread its black propaganda 
against the Sandanista government. Washington Post journalist Marcela 
Sanchez publicly stated that in the months before the August 2004 
presidential referendum, in which President Chavez was reaffirmed, (Roger) 
Noriega and others in the State Department visited the Washington Post's 
editorial board in order to influence its reporting on that topic.

Or have you forgotten, Mister Diehl, that journalist Maggie Gallagher, who 
collaborated with the Washington Post, was accused of accepting money in 
exchange for supporting one of President Bush's proposed Constitutional 
Amendments?

I can't imagine, Mister Diehl, how you came up with the terms "without due 
process" and "summarily," which you repeat in order to give the false 
impression of a dictatorial Venezuela that only exists in your imagination 
and in that crazy quilt of scraps that is your article. Surely, it will 
sound "ridiculous" to you, but now and for the first time in history, the 
press is more free in Venezuela than in the United States. Is that what 
bothers you, Mister Diehl?

It is not President Chavez' fault that the Bush administration cannot 
control the globalized world with the same methods and the same men as in 
the 1970s. It's not my fault if the Washington Post of Katherine Graham ... 
which was an example for the world in the Watergate case ... now acts as if 
it had been bought by the Nixon Family.

Instead of your incomplete, cartoonish, and malicious portrait of Venezuelan 
media and laws, I would have preferred to see, from a respectable 
"independent newspaper," a balanced analysis of our informative landscape. 
But I think that it's more likely that we'll find out, in the not-so-distant 
future, that you too, Mister Diehl, receive money from the State Department.

Andres Izarra
Minister of Communication and Information

Spanish version:  Respuesta del Ministro Andrés Izarra al diario Washington 
Post (http://espanol.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=29093)

My original translation:  http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=29153