After RCTV, TVes...do Venezuelans see improvements?

My first posting in this blog about Latin America will be on one of my favorite topics, the media and its relationship with the government. As this is a quite broad issue—particularly in Latin America there is plenty to explore in this regard—I will focus on one of the most controversial cases in many years related to the interaction between government and media organizations: Radio Caracas Television better known as RCTV. To be precise, I will focus on the aftermath of RCTV’s signal, which became TVes.

RCTV is one of the three big Venezuelan privately owned television networks—being Globovision and Venevision the other two—and until recently, probably the most popular. With more than 50 years broadcasting throughout Venezuela, RCTV was in the spotlight after the government decided not to renew their broadcasting license, thus hindering them from reaching all Venezuelan TV sets. On May 27, 2007, RCTV’s signal was shut down from the radioelectric spectrum triggering an avalanche of reactions from all sides of the other spectrum—the political one.

Given the relevance of the subject and its implications, I believe that the debate on whether the Venezuelan government did right or wrong should continue. Hardly argued is the importance of the media for these days’ political processes, hence the need for further debate; unfortunately, the current polarization around Venezuela makes it difficult to find coherent and impartial views.

Aware of this challenge, in this post I will not attempt to solve the RCTV case or even get near to it—that I will do some other time. Instead, I would like to bring forth a recent study conducted by Andres Cañizales from the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, Caracas, where his team measured the degree to which the main TV channels portrayed the December ‘07 referendum as something positive, negative or neutral.

As the levels of polarization in Venezuela are extremely high, it is not surprising that the main private broadcasting stations heavily supported the NO. Meanwhile, it is not surprising that the traditional state owned station VTV supported the SI with the same vehemence. What is noteworthy is the fact that TVes also supported the SI at similar levels as VTV.

When TVes was created, it was argued that it would serve the public in order to provide voice to all Venezuelans (see a note from Telesur and a note from Venezuelanalisis). As the minister of communication said, TVes would be a public station in contrast to a government station. In other words, the new station was to be independent from the government.

The fact that TVes, according to Cañizales research, served the government and not the public—by providing a biased coverage towards the SI, instead of a neutral one— only delegitimizes the government decision to deny the renewal of RCTV’s license. RCTV’s support for the coup and the damages to democracy was the argument for denying the renewal. Unfortunately, the new channel, with its blatant government bias does little to enhance democracy.