Wednesday 5 August 2009

Free press? Venezuela beats the US

[Of course Chávez's new media law is bad. But it won't make a dent in the huge amount of press freedom in Venezuela]

Free press? Venezuela beats the US

August 4th 2009, by Mark Weisbrot - Comment is Free (The Guardian)

Denis MacShane attacks the British left for defending Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, against an onslaught from the media, "new cold warriors", and rightwing demagogues throughout the world. His rhetorical trick is to tar the left with a new media law currently being debated in the Venezuelan congress, which he says "would impose prison sentences of up to four years for journalists whose writings might divulge information against 'the stability of the institutions of the state'."

Of course this is a bad law. There are a number of bad laws on the books in Venezuela, and in fact numerous countries in the region havedesacato (pdf) laws that make it a crime to insult the president. Do MacShane's targets – he mentions Ken Livingstone and Richard Gott – support such laws? I would bet serious money that they do not. So his main line of attack is misleading if not downright dishonest.

(click here to view entire article)


1 comment:

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