Reply #3: Hey Judy, here is an older piece on "Distorters Without Borders" [View All]

http://www.narconews.com/Issue25/article10.html


The "Distorters Without Borders"
The Two Roberts, Cox and Menard: Threats to Press Freedom

Venezuela: "The Show Must Go On!"
IAPA: Complicit in 1973 Coup in Chile

By Thierry Deronne
Reporting from Venezuela

October 4, 2002

A SEPTEMBER DAWN, 2002, IN THE VENEZUELAN COUNTRYSIDE: From a white vehicle that passes by a parking lot, some “unknown persons” throw four molotov cocktails. On the other side, someone puts out the fires right away: no victim, no damage. It’s just that the parking lot belongs to a regional affiliate of the commercial TV chain, “Globovision.” 1 And that the “attack” happens a few hours from the official visit to the region by President Hugo Chávez: and at the precise moment when a tripartite delegation of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Carter Foundation and the PNUD are investigating the issue of freedom of speech in Venezuela.

Next, Globovision denounces, with grand visual spectacle, a “Bolshevist attack with grenades.” It broadcasts archival footage of a car-bomb attempt against a Venezuelan president, decades ago. The editor of the daily El Nacional, Miguel Enrique Otero2, without waiting for any investigation, confirms: “The government has created para-governmental squads to act against the media and journalists,” and, “Chavez’s speech is responsible for the aggressions.”3. El Nacional’s front page displays an immediate letter from Robert Ménard, director of Reporters Without Borders, who demands that the Venezuelan government put an end to violence against the press.

A week later, when the OAS has left the country, the daily El Nacional resumes its campaign of aggressions against the Community Media4. This time, the target is the Community Radio station of Antimano. The reporter mentions a poster on the wall of the studio as proof of its Chavista nature, and criticizes the fact that the radio station says that there was a coup d’etat in Venezuela. El Nacional denounces the “illegality” of this radio station and 100 Community Media outlets in the entire country. Some weeks ago, the radio station in El Nacional’s target was victim of harassment by security forces in the hands of the Anti-Chavez opposition. Its members were liberated after the Community Media movement took to the streets.

In reality, El Nacional, a key newspaper in the organization of the coup, rejects, with any type of argument it can conjure, the possibility of pluralism of information in Venezuela. Its reporter quotes Miguel Ángel Martínez, president of the private-sector Chamber of Radio Industries, who denounces the “illegality” of the Community Radio stations. Martínez, in the name of the Chamber, publicly signed the decree of the short-lived coup d’etat last April. Later, in a public assembly on the tourist island of Margarita, he asked his affiliates to interfere with the frequencies of Community Media broadcasters when the next coup come