[van-announce] Fw: This is the kind of press we have to bear in Venezuela

[Charles Boylan]

October 2, 2003

Recipients:

Please read the following story about the utter lack of journalistic principles in the media controlled by the wealthy oligarchy in Venezuela. One day through its own democratic institutions the people of Venezuela may take action to ensure such irresponsibility is prohibited in law. Then the US and other international media including our own monopolized media will scream about lack of freedom of the press in Venezuela etc.  

Surely a necessary prerequisite for democracy is a responsible, informative media, not a media that deliberately spreads disinformation and personalizes all matters of public concern.

This story was sent to me by Professor Lopez-Garay. I ask you to forward it to your e-mail lists.

Charles Boylan


Please let your friends know this is happening in Venezuela
Hernán López-Garay

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11233

TAL CUAL's front page: President Chavez is shown holding a 9mm gun in his left hand

In a decisive commentary published in Venezuela-nalysis.com today, Lucila Gallino and Ralph Niemeyer writes that an episode worthy a Venezuelan soap opera ... like the one that happened last week in the Venezuelan media ...can explain once again the passions and the hatred that President Hugo Chavez and his government generate not only in Venezuela but also in the rest of the world. Would it be why Chavez is ... for many ... the Latin American "black sheep"?

Many things happen in Caracas every day ... in this city where the violence is tolerated, the media are the daily protagonists of a media explosion that shakes the nation. 

On Friday, September 26, the newspaper "Tal Cual", a government opponent, was sent to the streets with an issue that became the scandal of the week. On paper's front page, President Chavez is shown holding a 9mm gun in his left hand. The publication of this high-impact photograph is the full responsibility of the editor of the paper ... who will have to appear before the Law accused with falsification of information. 

The "little retouch" that was done to the original photo is not as simple as changing an image for another one. In this case, a gun was put digitally in the place of a red rose that had been given to the President during the First Women World Forum in Caracas where Chavez gave a speech to 190 women from 27 countries in support of Venezuela's revolutionary process. 

The retouching of this photomontage exceeds all boundaries of respect ... in the background, there was a poster with the Forum's logo ... in the altered photo it was erased to put the photo out of context. 

The original photo was taken during President Chavez's opening speech of the Women World Forum on the morning of September 24 by Feliciano Sequera, an official Miraflores Presidential Palace photographer ... two days before the publication of the controversial Tal Cual issue. The President addressed the female audience in a very particular style for a President, with the tender and familiar tone of a dear relative. 

According to civil employees, Chavez devours all type of books during his free time and that was demonstrated in his speech describing the most outstanding women of the history of Venezuela ... he mentioned Manuela Saenz repeatedly ... Simon Bolivar's loving and political companion. His speech inspired elation from the audience, very common in Latin. He spoke of a complicated political scenario ... but did not incite any violence. 

"What has happened in this case is bad journalism. It is media terrorism which is made in Venezuela by television, radio and of course by printed press," says Minister of Communication & Information, Jesse Chacon.  He told a press conference of local and foreign journalists: "What the President has in his hand is a red rose that was offered to him ... that rose is a love token, that is the [revolutionary] process."

Tal Cual's manipulation puts a nine millimeters gun ... a symbol of violence ... in the President's hand. It tries to cover the love, the human warmth that this [revolutionary] process has," Chacon says.

Minister Chacon has also called for reflection on the events that affect the democratic process and said the opposition (who he describes as "virtual paper parties") to engage in serious discussion in the mass media. 

The episode that resulted the cover of the newspaper "Tal Cual" represents an absence of journalistic values and an insurmountable example of yellow journalism in bad taste where the ignorance and lack of intelligent criticism reigns ... and it is mainly an offense to journalistic ethics. It is, without doubt, thoroughly rejectionable in any decent code.

Venezuela is already immersed in a situation where the essence of politics is lying ... the mass media has lost credibility and respect on both sides of the political spectrum.
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