Oligarchic media vs. revolutions

Joaquín Rivery Tur

THE Estrella del Oriente (Star of the East) newspaper does not illuminate anybody. It darkens the environment. It is preparing a shadowy "civic" coup in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, along with two other reactionary newspapers — El Deber and El Mundo — forming a powerful media trio in that eastern city backing the oligarchy’s fruitless attempts to overthrow the government of President Evo Morales.

They are guided by egotistical sentiments and boundless ambitions, and if they have not achieved their aims, it has not been for any lack of attempts and maneuvers, but Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) have turned out to be difficult to bring down, and their wealthy enemies are breaking their teeth trying.

The newspapers’ major ally is television, and between the four of them, the not-very-well-attended rallies and the use of violent gangs from the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (Union of Santa Cruz Youth), an incipient fascist group, they are trying to win over the masses who voted for Evo, while gangs attack MAS supporters, using terror to support their work.

The first indigenous-led government in the history of Bolivia is under constant attack from the oligarchy’s media, which publishes bald-faced lies, half-truths and manipulation while concealing the immense work being carried out by the MAS government.

They never mention that, thanks to this humble leadership, Bolivia has become the third Latin American country free of illiteracy; that natural resources are now the property of the nation; that all contracts with foreign oil companies have been changed; that millions of hectares of land have been given over to campesinos and indigenous people; that education has been boosted; that health care for the poor is being improved, and that all elderly people are guaranteed a minimum income for surviving in the midst of an alarming international crisis.

It is not just the Bolivian people who are suffering from the ups and downs of media campaigns defending large national and transnational corporations; before them, it was the Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez.

In Venezuela, the media — above all, a group of TV stations and big-business newspapers — openly supported the fleeting 2002 coup d’état, and then failed to report a single word about the fascist barbarities executed by the coup perpetrators. They distorted reality and have consistently attacked the Bolivarian government.

The major TV networks have been calling the shots, often in violation of the law. But the revolutionaries are not standing by with their arms folded. Last year, RCTV (Radio Caracas Televisión), one of the most rabid in attacking Chávez, calling him a dictator — just like they do in Bolivia with Morales and in Ecuador with President Rafael Correa — had to face the fact that its expired open broadcasting license was not renewed, thus forcing it to become a cable station, with the same venom but a smaller audience.

Globovisión, a TV news station, was left as the most virulent anti-Chávez broadcaster, and was warned long ago that it cannot broadcast what it calls "news," based on suppositions, because that is in violation of the law.

Moreover, its executives seemed to think that continuing to actively hurl insults at the president and his policies under the useless "protection" of the Inter-American Press Society (SIP, an entity of big-business news executives), to launch international crusades over supposed restrictions and even the Organization of American States would allow them to violate any law on the books, and they were caught committing the very serious crime of tax evasion, along with having four different court cases brought against it for different reasons.

Similar problems and accusations of wanting to eliminate freedom of the press, which nobody practices under capitalism, are likewise the lot of Ecuadorian President Correa, who has been battered by the oligarchic media because of steps he has taken to redistribute wealth a little more in favor of the poor.

Currently, the Teleamazonas TV station is being sued for including inappropriate content during hours when it is prohibited, transmitting baseless information and instigating street protests with phony news.

An enormous mass of accusations has been unleashed against the Ecuadorian government, charging it with trying to eliminate freedom of the press with any measure it takes, just like in Venezuela and Bolivia.

In that context, Antonio García, president of the National Council on Radio and Television Broadcasting (Conartel), stated: "We are not going to give way to pressure and we are going to keep applying the law responsibly and legally, as mandated by the Constitution, to any media that deserve to be investigated or processed."

Interestingly, one reader said in a commentary published in the newspaper El Comercio, "In Ecuador, what is fully in effect is not freedom of expression but freedom of enterprise, given that the majority of those controlling and with access to the media are groups with economic and religious power and the government of the moment."

The positions are firm, but Vice President Lenin Moreno has asked for tolerance in a statement to Teleamazonas itself, and spoke in favor of not punishing the channel very severely.

Previously, however, Correa stated during his weekly radio/TV program that in the case of Teleamazonas, "We are applying the law to an irresponsible press that is publishing lies," and in a more recent official communiqué, he insisted that, "The former power, defeated, has entrenched itself in certain privately-owned media companies to try to damage, from within the illegitimacy of their de facto powers, a government of true popular representation."

Lies are the preferred weapon of the oligarchies and the United States to carry out unjustifiable policies. Newspapers and television stations will always hide the advances of countries with progressive governments, but they will publicize the most horrendous fabrications against them.

Right now, they are attacking Venezuela by spreading the ridiculous lie that authority over young children and adolescents is to be removed from their parents.

That same atrocity was used against Cuba decades ago in Operation Peter Pan, which separated 14,000 children from their parents, because it must not be forgotten that the Cuban Revolution has been fighting for 50 years against the macabre "anti-communist" fantasies of Washington and its massive system in the mass media, which covers the entire world.