The Great Venezuelan TV Debate

Here is the debate, a reasonable one, being heard in Latin America these days. In the name of a political vision that is fundamentally about redistributing power to those who have not had it, are some leaders trampling on democracy?

In Venezuela these past few weeks that debate has focused on the decision by the government of President Hugo Chavez to "de-license" a television station (RCTV) that has been a leading critic of the government.

Chavez has become the favorite target of U.S. (and Latin American) conservatives on the attack against the broader leftward shift in Latin American politics -- a substitute who has come just in time to replace an ailing Fidel Castro in that role. Last week on Fox TV, Geraldo Rivera called the President repeatedly elected by strong majorities, a "communist dictator." Former GOP Presidential candidate and televangelist Pat Robertson famously called for the U.S. to assassinate him ("thou shalt not kill", being made an optional commandment).

And to be clear, Chavez asks for it, relishes it. At the U.N. last fall he delivered his famous "I can still smell the sulfur" speech in which he called President Bush the devil. Chavez's rant from the most famous podium in the world may have lifted book sales for Noam Chomsky (whose book Chavez held aloft) but I don't think it did much to advance the interests of either the Venezuelan people, or Chavez. It certainly doomed Venezuela's effort to win a seat on a key UN human rights panel.

I personally have never had much respect in politics for people whose first priority is to get off on their own rhetoric, at the expense of better priorities. It is especially not an attractive quality in presidents. President Bush, for example, clearly didn't do U.S. troops in Iraq any favor when he challenged the insurgency there to "bring it on." A year and hundreds of U.S. deaths later (and thousands or Iraqi deaths) the insurgency issued a communiqué asking, "Have you another challenge?"

The Venezuela RCTV debate, in a nutshell, looks like this.

Critics of Chavez, in Venezuela and elsewhere, have protested loudly, warning that the government's decision to not renew the station's license (as in the U.S., the airwaves are publicly-owned but licensed to commercial networks) is an ominous sign that the Venezuelan President is aiming to silence criticism and dissent. Those critics include everyone from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Washington Office on Latin America, to the Bush administration. This week Secretary of State Rice publicly confronted the Venezuelan government over the issue at an OAS meeting (Venezuela countered with a call for an investigation into U.S. torture practices at Guantanamo).

The Venezuelan government has countered, not-especially-believably, that this is all really "a simple regulatory matter." A more complete and credible defense of the move comes from the reporter who covered Venezuela for eight years for the Associated Press, Bart Jones. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jones noted RCTV's key role in an April 2002 coup attempt against Chavez:

After military rebels overthrew Chavez and he disappeared from public view for two days, RCTV's biased coverage edged fully into sedition. Thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets to demand his return, but none of that appeared on RCTV or other television stations. RCTV News Director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he received an order from superiors at the station: "Zero pro-Chavez, nothing related to Chavez or his supporters…. The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country." While the streets of Caracas burned with rage, RCTV ran cartoons, soap operas and old movies such as "Pretty Woman." On April 13, 2002, [RCTV chief] Granier and other media moguls met in the Miraflores palace to pledge support to the country's coup-installed dictator, Pedro Carmona, who had eliminated the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution.

The former AP correspondent then adds:

Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States? The U.S. government probably would have shut down RCTV within five minutes after a failed coup attempt — and thrown its owners in jail. Chavez's government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves. It can still broadcast on cable or via satellite dish.

I am a strong believer in free speech. For as long as this Blog has existed we have allowed completely uncensored commentary. Many times I have been encouraged by readers and friends to either edit or eliminate the comments section. "Some of those people are just stupid, with no actual argument at all." And that is the point of free speech, to protect the space for expression even by people who disagree with everything you write or say. That's why the comments section – home to reasoned people and Bozos alike – remains free and uncensored.

Maybe, for his own sake and Venezuela's, Chavez should have had similar tolerance for the station that joined the coup against him.

There is clearly a reasonable debate to be had over the responsibilities that networks are obligated to assume in exchange for one of the most lucrative gifts a government can bestow, use of publicly-owned airwaves (as Jones notes, RCTV is still completely at liberty to broadcast via satellite or cable). In the U.S. too little attention is given to the responsibilities that come with that gift.

On the other hand, in public leadership, image means as much as substance. Chavez might gain far more – domestically and globally – by pointing out how bad the network is and then still letting it have access to the public airwaves. At the end of the day, I still believe that the best way to counter an argument against you is not to censor it, but to engage it and refute it.