What’s happening in Central and South America? Argentina’s President Hugo Chavez has launched (Telesur) a state run international news organization along the lines of Al-Jazeera. Argentina, Uruguay, and Cuba are all investors in the project.
What are the implications of this? Can we expect huge doses of anti-American propaganda from this news outlet in South America? Will the US media immediately embrace Telesur as a peer and member of the international media even if it is state run? Will feeds aired on Telesur be broadcast on American TV without scrutiny like al-Jazeera?
I have my suspicions, but I guess we will find out.
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e1f7721274b59b9d3a3194b18d7cd7aa
'Chávez TV' Faces Tough Market in Latin America
News Analysis, Marcelo Ballvé,
Pacific News Service, May 24, 2005
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina--It's being called "El Jazeera," "Al Bolívar," and "Telechávez." Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is launching a 24-hour satellite news channel to undergird and broadcast his "Bolivarian" dream of Latin American unity.
The buzz about Telesur, as the venture is named, is that it could become the Latin American version of Al Jazeera, the successful Arab-language satellite TV channel. But a look at Latin America's diversifying, ultra-competitive media environment shows how difficult it will be for Telesur to gain that kind of influence.
The funding appears solid. Besides an infusion of Venezuelan oil money, the start-up has drawn commitments of financial and programming support from Uruguay, Cuba and Argentina. Brazil has promised technical help, though not cash -- at least not yet.
The editorial stance is combative: Telesur's bosses recently told Mexico City daily La Jornada they want to act as a clearinghouse for regional independent and community media, to lend them a voice in mass media. They vowed to "work against corporate TV by featuring social movements, the people, our communities."
What is Telesur going up against? Consider Argentina, which, with a population of 40 million to Venezuela's 25 million, would be by far the largest country with a financial and programming stake in Telesur. Success in Argentina, considered a regional media test market, could lend Telesur the visibility and momentum it needs to establish itself elsewhere.
First, it's important to know that over 40 percent of Argentine households have pay TV, with a range of news options. And in fact, contrary to what Chávez says, most of these options do not come from the hegemonic North, from New York, Madrid or CNN studios in Atlanta.
Argentina's homegrown 24-hour cable news channels are far more popular than any import -- a fact that should give pause to anyone predicting the emergence of a pan-Latin American news juggernaut. In Argentina and in several other larger Latin American TV markets, the stiffest competition to Chávez's Telesur would not come from Ted Turner's cable news brainchild, but from locally produced news.
The Argentine Todo Noticias all-news channel is routinely the top-rated cable channel of any kind nationwide. Crónica and Canal 26, locally produced competitors, also rank high in the ratings, in the top five and 20 respectively. CNN Español doesn't even crack the top 30.
In Brazil, a demographic giant of 180 million, Telesur must bridge a language gap. Dubbing from Spanish to Portuguese or vice-versa will be expensive, and difficult with the speed required by 24/7-news. Brazil's TV market will also be tough to crack because it is a near monopoly. The private Globo network is so dominant that it sometimes seems a quasi-state TV; it also operates its own 24-hour cable news channel.
It's true: Latin American audiences need a broadcaster with a Latin American lens, open to documentaries and capable of reporting on Latin America with empathy, sophistication and depth. Even on local 24-hour news channels and CNN Español there is often better coverage of European and U.S. news than of coups in the Andes.
But can Telesur become more than a niche player? In the Middle East, Al Jazeera's success was due to its ability to project a relatively independent voice in a landscape dominated by censored media. In Latin America, media began slipping out of state control in the 1980s. In that sense, Telesur is the reverse of Al Jazeera: a statist reply to a mostly privatized landscape.
Venezuelan officials say Telesur content may be incorporated into the broadcasts of state-owned channels like Venezuela's state TV; the municipal TV station in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay; and Argentina's Canal 7 network. These media, in turn, would create programming for Telesur.
What are these TV stations like? Argentina's "long-suffering" and "poorly programmed" Canal 7 (according to local media historian Pablo Servín) has the worst ratings of Argentina's five free networks. State media here also are tainted by a history of serving as mouthpieces for governments, including the junta that disappeared and tortured tens of thousands of people in the 1970s.
That is another question for Telesur: the far from exemplary history of state-influenced media in the region, baggage that Latin Americans are familiar with, since they unwillingly viewed the boring or propagandistic programming for decades. Telesur will interact, on a day-to-day basis, with broadcasting partners that still respond to state media bureaucracies. Telesur's board includes at least two veterans of state media: a Cuban media worker and the chief of Argentina's Canal 7.
Furthermore, Chávez has instituted strict controls on Venezuelan media aimed at instilling his vision of "social responsibility" in publishing and broadcasting. Chávez says Telesur is not about propaganda, and will run independent of his government. He says Telesur is about counter-hegemonic TV, media plurality and de-centering the news.
That's not much of a sales pitch. Unless real muscle, innovation and imagination are put at the service of Telesur, it is more likely to attract what surviving state-owned media in Latin America seem to be good at cultivating these days: indifference.
PNS Editor Marcelo Ballvé writes about Latin America and is a 2005 Inter American Press Association Scholar.
With a press conference Tuesday by Minister of Communication and Information Andrés Izarra, Telesur will be on air. This Latin American TV project includes already four countries in the hemisphere.
Telesur director Aram Aharonian and other members of the board will attend the ceremony to be held at Ríos Reyna Hall.
The new Televisión del Sur, C.A., a multi-state company with capital of Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, plans to cover the Americas, including the United States and Canada, the Bolivarian News Agency (ABN) reported.
The board, headed by Aharorian, an Uruguayan journalist, is composed of journalists from the whole hemisphere, with no representation specific to any state or government.
About 40 percent of programs will be press coverage, such as news and interviews. The remainder will be independent audiovisual productions by individuals, regional and/or community TV stations, colleges and NGO's.
Latin America gets own news channel
Tuesday 24 May 2005, 3:51 Makka Time, 0:51 GMT
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Telesur, a 24-hours television news network that aims to compete with all-news networks such as CNN, has aired a first test signal.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FD075380-B4C4-4A45-B4FA-0C1E058FA607.htm
The guiding principle of the Caracas-based network is to "see Latin America with Latin American eyes, not foreign eyes", the network's Uruguayan director, Aram Aharonian said on Monday.
Telesur will have "a news agenda totally different" from "transnational" networks such as CNN and Spain's TVE, Aharonian said
For example "they tell us that there is an alliance to liberate Iraq. We know that it is a genocidal invasion", he said.
The network has seed capital of $2.5 million. Although Aharonian did not comment on the network's ownership, Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra recently said the network was 51%Venezuelan, 20% Argentine, 19% Cuban and 10% Uruguayan.
War of ideas
The network will air breaking news, interviews and investigative reports as well as documentaries and regional films.
Aharonian insisted that Telesur would not be a propaganda instrument for Venezuela and Cuba, but it will rather be "an instrument in the war of ideas".
The network will have nine correspondents spread out across the Americas.
Izarra said in early May that the Telesur test signal should last until 24 June, with the full broadcast to begin in mid-September.
Brazil may also participate in Telesur, but the Portuguese-speaking South American giant is working on TV-Brazil, its own network project.
TV-Brazil will air Spanish-language programming and emphasise Latin American unity, Eugenio Bucci, the head of the Brazilian agency coordinating the efforts said.
One characteristic feature in Telesur will be Latin American films, Colombian journalist Jorge Enrique Botero, the information director told Prensa Latina.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FD075380-B4C4-4A45-B4FA-0C1E058FA607.htm