Posted on 07/23/2005 7:49:06 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
Media: As Telesur, Hugo Chavez's new South American TV network, goes on the air, it's billed as a pan-American alternative to CNN. Knowing Chavez, sensible minds fear a propaganda machine. It's much worse.
Ahead of its first broadcast Sunday, Telesur released a ghastly news trailer featuring one of the hemisphere's grimmest narco terrorists, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda. This professional killer leads the 13,000-strong FARC Marxist guerrillas who have terrorized Colombia for 40 years.
As Sureshot preened before Telesur cameras, Telesur officials justified their free publicity for him as newsworthiness. "Do they think Sureshot doesn't exist?" said Director-General Aram Aharonian, a Uruguayan Marxist.
Colombians cut through the sophomorics. "It was very painful for Colombia that out of the 44 million decent Colombians, Telesur should choose Sureshot for its first two seconds of broadcasting," Colombia's deputy foreign minister told Chavez.
Democratic Colombia is winning its war against terror, and its economy grew 6% in 2004. To visibly feature washed-up narco terrorists like Sureshot as Colombia's "real" story is a cliche.
It's not news at all. It's a warning that this $6 million network will be an electronic platform for terrorists to intimidate democracies. All terrorists thrive on publicity.
Telesur is about giving FARC, which, like al-Qaida, kidnaps and kills authentic journalists, a new jolt. Freshman Rep. Connie Mack of Florida also warns that Telesur is "patterned after Al-Jazeera to spread (Chavez's) anti-American, anti-freedom rhetoric."
That wouldn't be surprising. It's majority-owned by Chavez's government. Its president, Andres Izarra, is Chavez's information minister. Its offices are housed with Venezuela's state TV. Its staff has been seen wearing FARC T-shirts. And its minority backers are the leftist regimes of Cuba, Argentina and Uruguay.
But Latin America doesn't lack news networks.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
That is funny, CNN is owned by a Muslim now, so it is terror network against terror network.
CNN en Espanol is a different creature. It's run by a different team. ANYTHING is better than Chavez in any case. I don't think they are that liberal but even if they were (this is CNN en espanol, not regular CNN), liberal is waaaaay better than stone-cold castroite communist, the real kind.
ping!
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