What if it's the press that threatens democracy?
LETTER FROM VENEZUELA
By Robert Collier, Northern California Media Guild
U.S. journalists are accustomed to defending their colleagues in other nations when freedom of the press is threatened by antidemocratic forces. But what should be done when it's foreign reporters themselves who are part of the problem?
This unusual dilemma is at the forefront in Venezuela, where the private media and leftist President Hugo Chavez are locked in a no-holds-barred battle for power.
The International Federation of Journalists, the international affiliate of The Newspaper Guild-CWA, has recently found itself in the uncomfortable position of trying to persuade Venezuelan journalists to back out of their political fight with the government. It's unclear whether the IFJ's efforts are having any effect, however, as Venezuela continues lurching toward a possible repeat of the April military-led coup that temporarily overthrew Chavez.
By any measure, the fight between Chavez and the media is a two-way street. Chavez frequently condemns the media, sometimes criticizing individual reporters and media owners by name. The media, for their part, return the favor in spades, throwing objectivity to the winds by playing a stridently partisan role supporting the opposition.
In the months leading up to the April coup, most media outlets (all but one of the Caracas newspapers, and all four private national TV channels) gave blanket coverage to anti-Chavez political activities and called for the democratically-elected president to be overthrown. During the 48-hour coup that installed a conservative military-civilian junta, the media blacked out pro-Chavez street protests and completely ignored the military counter-coup that eventually rescued Chavez and returned him to the presidency.
Venezuelans only found out about Chavez's return by watching U.S. cable television broadcasts, which fully reported the news.
Now, Venezuela's media are again playing the same role, as the opposition is again calling for Chavez's overthrow. International media owners' groups, such as the Inter-American Press Association, have lined up solidly against Chavez, denouncing him for allegedly dictatorial conduct and repressing freedom of the press.
In June, the IFJ sent a three-person delegation to Venezuela to sort out the competing claims. The delegation -- comprising IFJ General Secretary Aidan White, Argentinian media union representative and IFJ vice president Osvaldo Urriolabeitia, and TNG representative and San Francisco Chronicle reporter and columnist Robert Collier -- met with Venezuelan journalists and representatives of the government, media owners, labor unions and human-rights groups.
In their meetings with journalists, the IFJ members heard repeated complaints about pressures from media owners to press an anti-Chavez political slant. But it also was clear that rank-and-file journalists, like the rest of the Venezuelan population, are deeply divided along political lines. Local journalists hotly debated among themselves whether it was legitimate for the media to have a strong political bias -- and, if so, whether that slant should be pro- or anti-Chavez.
The IFJ delegation concluded that Chavez and the media were equally responsible for their tensions. In a final report released in July, the IFJ praised rank-and-file media workers, saying "many Venezuelan journalists have shown extraordinary courage, dignity, and professionalism." But it balanced that praise with sharp criticism of media bias, concluding, "all international media organisations in the Americas and worldwide must repudiate unprofessionalism by media employers and insist that media should not be used as weapons for the illegal overthrow of elected government."
The delegation also found that Chavez had used unacceptably harsh language against the media and had been slow to urge his supporters to refrain from attacking or intimidating reporters in the streets. Despite this heavy-handedness, however, the government has not closed a single media outlet or imprisoned or killed a single journalist.
The IFJ is organizing a conference on media professionalism later this fall in Caracas. The conference, co-sponsored with UNESCO, will bring journalists from all over Venezuela to discuss how rank-and-file journalists can avoid becoming political pawns in the battle between the government and their bosses.
The situation is especially tricky for the IFJ because the Venezuelan journalists' union, the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP), generally lines up with the opposition. Even more controversial is the role of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation (CTV), which has long had close relations with the AFL-CIO and other international unions. CTV President Carlos Ortega is a strident opponent of Chavez, and Ortega worked closely with Fedecamaras, the nation's business federation, to carry out the general strike/lockout that led to to the April coup. Only when Ortega was edged out of the junta by Fedecamaras leader Pedro Carmona did he withdraw his support for the coup.
Since the coup, not dissuaded by the treachery of big business, Ortega has renewed his offensive against Chavez, repeatedly calling for Fedecamaras to join the CTV in another general strike/lockout.
The AFL-CIO has expressed strong solidarity with the CTV, pointing out that Chavez has violated International Labor Organization conventions -- notably by mandating National Election Commission authority over CTV internal elections. With U.S. government funding, the AFL-CIO has carried out union training courses for CTV activists and helped the federation carry out last November's internal elections.
This support has proved controversial in Venezuela and at home. Although the AFL-CIO condemned the coup, it denied that the CTV had played any role in the plotting and has remained mum about the CTV's aggressively radical stance since then. Some U.S. union activists have grumbled that the AFL-CIO's conduct appeared to come perilously close to its Cold War-era practice of helping the U.S. government overthrow leftist foreign governments.
<http://www.newsguild.org/gr/gr_display.php?storyID=945> -- Yoshie
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