Avila TV Venezuela: Revolutionizing Television

Photo: Avila TV Mural
[In Venezuela they are a key force in the country’s ongoing media-war. Armed with video cameras, they are a team of some 380 young people working for Caracas television station, Avila TV. Started as an experiment just three years ago, according to one study it is now the third most watched station in the city. Funded completely by the government, they consider themselves a voice of President Hugo Chavez’s “socialist revolution.”]

Avila TV Venezuela: Revolutionizing Television

June 15th 2009, by Lainie Cassel - UpsideDownWorld.org

In Venezuela they are a key force in the country's ongoing media-war. Armed with video cameras, they are a team of some 380 young people working for Caracas television station, Avila TV. Started as an experiment just three years ago, according to one study it is now the third most watched station in the city. Funded completely by the government, they consider themselves a voice of President Hugo Chavez's "socialist revolution."

Located on Avenida Urdaneta, in the center of the city, Avila TV is in a large beautiful building bustling with young adults sporting Caracas' latest urban fashions. The building, a former bank, has been transformed with floors of state of the art equipment and walls decorated with elaborate murals and posters of well-known revolutionary figures.

(click here to view entire article)

Community Media: The Thriving Voice of the Venezuelan People

[In Venezuela today a grass-roots movement of community and alternative media is challenging the domination of private commercial media. Part of this transformation is the understanding of freedom of speech as a positive and basic right.]

Community Media: The Thriving Voice of the Venezuelan People

July 31st 2009, by Liz Migliorelli and Caitlin McNulty

In Venezuela today a grass-roots movement of community and alternative media is challenging the domination of private commercial media. Community oriented, non profit, non commercial, citizen and volunteer run media outlets are a crucial part of the democratic transformation of society that is occurring throughout Venezuela. Part of this transformation is the understanding of freedom of speech as a positive and basic right. This right includes universal access to a meaningful space for communication in addition to freedom from censorship. Freedom of expression as a positive right provides universal access to the means of communication. Political Analyst Diana Raby reiterates; "the technology of modern communications has to be made accessible to all, not merely as consumers but as participants and creators."[1] Community media is beginning to fill this role in Venezuela.

(click here to view entire article)

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)

Venezuela to Transfer Private Media Concessions to Community Media

[The head of Venezuela's telecommunications agency (CONATEL), and minister of housing and infrastructure, Diosdado Cabello, announced on Saturday the immediate closure of 32 privately owned radio stations and 2 regional television stations, as their broadcast licenses had expired or they had violated regulations. Cabello said the recuperated licenses would be handed over to community media.]

Venezuela to Transfer Private Media Concessions to Community Media

August 3rd 2009, by Kiraz Janicke - Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, August 3rd 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - The head of Venezuela's telecommunications agency (CONATEL), and minister of housing and infrastructure, Diosdado Cabello, announced on Saturday the immediate closure of 32 privately owned radio stations and 2 regional television stations, as their broadcast licenses had expired or they had violated regulations. Cabello said the recuperated licenses would be handed over to community media.

The minister said many of the stations were operating illegally and had failed to register or pay fees to CONATEL. Decisions are still pending on a further 206 stations.

(click here to read entire article)

Globovisón: The Loose Cannon of Venezuelan Media

[Venezuela’s socialist national project is well underway and making ever more significant strides, in spite of an entrenched, privileged minority in opposition, relentlessly spurred on by the corporate media and its vociferous attacks.]

Globovisón: The Loose Cannon of Venezuelan Media

May 2oth 2009, by Carlos Ruiz - VenCentral

In their classic 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky demonstrated how corporate media select topics, place emphasis, set boundaries, ask questions and shape content in accordance with broad capitalist imperatives. It’s a largely unconscious process driven by conformist human beings, and infinitely more effective than the heavy-handed methods of past communist regimes.

During the 20th century, ballooning marketing budgets played a crucial role in the marginalization, and ultimate extinction of influential labor-based/progressive media. Today’s mass media subservience to elite power structures is an inevitable consequence of the pursuit of profit. Advertising revenues continue to flow to any given publication, radio or TV station on the condition that its reporting and general content supports a business-friendly status quo.

(click here to view entire article)

Venezuela: 21st Century Technology for 21st Century Socialism

[One of the cornerstones of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian revolution, as the process led by President Hugo Chavez of changing Venezuela to meet to needs of the poor is known, is the use of technology to improve the lives of the majority of the population that lives near or below the poverty line.]

Venezuela: 21st Century Technology for 21st Century Socialism

April 18th 2009, by Lainie Cassel - Green Left Weekly

Nestled in the heart of Barrio 23 de Enero, a large impoverished neighbourhood in Caracas, among the man-made ranchos with red brick walls and metal roofing, stands the Ramon Ismael Ramos Infocenter.

Filled with over 70 state-of-the-art computers and flat-screen monitors, the space offers a sharp contrast to the surrounding barrio.

One of the cornerstones of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian revolution, as the process led by President Hugo Chavez of changing Venezuela to meet to needs of the poor is known, is the use of technology to improve the lives of the majority of the population that lives near or below the poverty line.

In a country where nearly all major media outlets are controlled by a handful of the country's richest citizens, and are hostile to the process of change, the government sees access to technology as a crucial tool to democratise the media.

(click here to view entire article)