[lbo-talk] Venezuela sets up 'CNN rival'

Tommy Kelly tkelly15450 at charter.net
Sat Jul 2 09:28:19 PDT 2005


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4620411.stm

In a popular shopping area of Caracas, with street musicians playing a bolero in the background, Jorge Botero is filming a promo for Latin America's most ambitious new satellite channel.

"Grabando," he shouts ("recording").

A young journalism student walks into shot and says: "The news on Telesur, the true face of Latin America."

Telesur is a new pan-Latin American TV channel based in Venezuela. It aims to rival CNN and the other Spanish-language news channels coming out of Miami and Atlanta.

Some have already dubbed it Al-Bolivar - a combination of the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and President Hugo Chavez's favourite independence hero.

'Street-level view'

"It's a question of focus, of where we look at our continent from," says Mr Botero, Telesur's news director from Colombia.

"They look at it from the United States. So they give a rose-tinted, flavour-free version of Latin America. We want to look at it from right here.

"We want our cameras to get into places that their cameras have never been, to give a real, street-level view - like the girl said: 'The true face of Latin America.'"

But there is still a long way to go. The cement-mixers and welders are working flat out in a long-abandoned annexe, off the back of Venezuelan state TV.

This is where Telesur will have its main studio. By the end of September there should be 40 journalists working here and in bureaux across the continent - putting out a 24-hour mix of news, documentaries and movies, all with the stamp "made in Latin America".

The first pre-recorded programmes are due to begin transmission at the end of July.
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