Posted on 02/22/2014 12:32:56 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA, Colombia -- In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro controls the TV remote. A week after he turned off Colombian television station NTN24, he threatened to pull the plug on CNN.
“They want to show the world that there’s a civil war in Venezuela,” Maduro told a cheering audience Thursday night. “CNN, get out of Venezuela, enough of your propaganda.”
Hours later, four of the broadcaster’s journalists had their press passes revoked.
Adding to the confusion of the past two weeks of violent protests in Venezuela is that they’ve taken place amid a broadcast brownout. As local television stations have either been unwilling or unable to take a hard-line against the government, citizens are turning elsewhere for news.
Regional cable channels like NTN24 and CNN en Español saw viewership rise as they stepped into the information breach. The fact that Venezuelans were relying on stations based in Bogotá and Atlanta to learn what’s happening down the block is a sign of how effective the administration has been at hemming in the local press.
“I would say people are completely uninformed,” said Carlos Correa, director of Espacio Publico, a media watchdog in Caracas. Because traditional outlets have largely been muzzled, “people are looking for information on social networks and through text messages that don’t have the same rigor or verification process as, say, a newspaper.”
“News right now has the same logic as a rumor,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
"Dear International Editor:
Listen and understand. The game changed in Venezuela last night. What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden.
What we have this morning is no longer the Venezuela story you thought you understood.
Throughout last night, panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries on motorcycles roaming middle class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting.
People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO makes an urgent plea for an investigation into widespread reports of torture of detainees. There are now dozens of serious human right abuses: National Guardsmen shooting tear gas canisters directly into residential buildings. We have videos of soldiers shooting civilians on the street.
And that’s just what came out in real time, over Twitter and YouTube, before any real investigation is carried out. Online media is next, a city of 645,000 inhabitants has been taken off the internet amid mounting repression, and this blog itself has been the object of a Facebook “block” campaign.
What we saw were not “street clashes”, what we saw is a state-hatched offensive to suppress and terrorize its opponents.
Here at Caracas Chronicles we’re doing what it can to document the crisis, but there’s only so much one tiny, zero-budget blog can do.
After the major crackdown on the streets of large (and small) Venezuelan cities last night, I expected some kind of response in the major international news outlets this morning. I understand that with an even bigger and more photogenic freakout ongoing in an even more strategically important country, we weren’t going to be front-page-above-the-fold, but I’m staggered this morning to wake up, scan the press and find…
Nothing.
As of 11 a.m. this morning, the New York Times World Section has…nothing."
While disturbing, this should come as no surprise since Soros' gave more than $52 million to media organizations from 2000-2010.
Two schools were working with FCC on the project, according to Byron York of The Washington Examiner. The University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy, were tasked by the FCC with coming up with criteria for what information is "critical" for Americans to have. The FCC study would have covered newspapers, websites, radio and television, according to The Washington Post.
On top of the 1st Amendment problems with this proposal, the schools involved have strong ties to liberal billionaire George Soros' Open Society Foundations and have gotten more than $1.8 million from since 2000.
The journalism programs at these schools have even more ties to Soros besides their funding, including faculty members writing for university-based publications allied with Soros-funded outlets.
The schools have collaborated on this project going back at least to 2012. Lewis A. Friedland, who was a "principle investigator" for the FCC on this project, also directs the Center for Communication and Democracy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He gave a presentation at Annenberg in Feb. 2012, on "communication ecology." This was just four months before the schools presented their findings to the FCC.
Tracking the $8.5 billion Soros-foundation world is challenging because he funds so much and many of those organizations then partner or even fund one another."...............
6:28 PM Feb 21, 2014 - NYT:
"Tensions escalated further in Venezuela on Friday as street protests that began nine days ago continued and the government persisted in clamping down on coverage of the unrest in the broadcast media and online.
At least seven journalists for CNN International and CNN Español reported that their press credentials had been revoked, and that authorities had asked some of them when they planned to leave the country. ........
...And CNN isn’t the only media outlet under siege. Reporters have been detained, beaten and robbed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Media blackouts, arrests and a campaign of harassment against dissenting voices has become a hallmark of this administration,” the group’s deputy director said on Thursday.
At times, the government’s reach extended beyond traditional media, stifling access to news online. Last week Venezuelan Twitter users periodically lost access to photos on the platform, and this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted, an entire city — San Cristobal, an opposition stronghold in the state of Táchira — reportedly lost Internet connectivity altogether. (El Universal reported that service was being restored Friday evening.)
International media organizations have also raised alarm about attacks on the press. Reporters Without Borders issued a scathing statement Tuesday that said it “condemns these acts of arbitrary censorship,” and added: “controlling information will do nothing but poison the current situation.”
An association of Spanish journalists also denounced the “genuine information blackout” in Venezuela and said in a statement: “The freedom of the press is a fundamental right in democracies, which is why all efforts to cut it off are a grave setback.” [my emphasis add].............................
He needs to study Jay Carney and Joe Goebbels, take a step back, and put the lights out on a "reporter" or two to set an example like Putin did.
Bottom line is he has Universal Suffrage, the military, and Chavez's ghost on his side, you would have to be a total cluster f*ck to lose control.
".......according to Human Rights Watch, the state broadcasting authority warned that coverage of the violence could violate a controversial law that prohibits the broadcasting of material that "foments anxiety" or "incites or promotes hatred and intolerance for ... political reasons."
"..........The government's clampdown on private media has left little room for views outside of the official line.
Venezuelan journalists in Florida created a new channel that streams online called ElVenezolanoTV. It was slated to go live next week, but the protests caused it to move up its debut.
Many of the journalists on board are considered "opposition journalists" by the Venezuelan government, but they say their goal is to present unbiased journalism. The government has an invitation to come on their air anytime, its journalists say.
CNN also goes through great lengths to verify the iReports that are submitted.
Producers speak to the person who uploaded the iReport, check metadata and cross-verify whether the image is original, fact check any allegations, and add additional context and reporting as needed.
In one extreme case, a violent video that depicts protesters and officials clashing took more than 10 hours to fact check and approve. The effort was worth it, said Juan Muñoz, director of social media for CNN en Español. "It´s an amazing iReport. The best one I have ever seen on the platform."
“...........As well as cracking down on foreign and domestic media, Maduro’s government — which blames right-wing infiltrators for fomenting unrest — warned it would cut off gasoline supplies to restless areas.
“We will be obliged to suspend the supply of fuel to areas under fascist siege in order to preserve the security of all,” Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez said on Twitter, in the latest move to squelch more than two weeks of demonstrations that have frequently descended into violence.....
....The opposition is planning another major march in the capital on Saturday to demand the disarming of pro-government civilian groups reportedly involved in attacks on demonstrators.
The government has called for a rival rally by “Chavista women” at the same time, raising the specter of more clashes between the two sides.......
http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/02/21/venezuela-death-toll-mounts-in-growing-unrest
Follow developments in Venezuela by clicking on our hashtag, #Bolivarian Revolution
http://www.ticotimes.net/categories/bolivarian-revolution
But what really set them off was the harsh police response to their initial protest, in which several students were detained and allegedly abused, as well as follow-up demonstrations to call for their release, according to students and people who live in San Cristobal, a city on Venezuela's remote Andean border.
"It was shocking not just to students but to all of San Cristobal," said Gaby Arellano, a 27-year-old student leader who has been involved in the national opposition campaign. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back."
The protests expanded and grew more intense, drawing in more non-students angry about the dismal economy and crime in general, which led to more people being detained. Students at other universities decided to march in Caracas, which grew into a nationwide campaign when the prominent opposition leaders decided to get involved.
The main rally on Feb. 12 in the capital turned violent, resulting in three deaths from gunshots and then the jailing of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Now, protests that continued throughout the country Friday, and are particularly fierce in San Cristobal, rarely, if ever, mention the attempted rape.
"I'm protesting because of the insecurity, for the scarcity and the abuse of power that we have been experiencing," said Marcia Garcia, a 30-year-old mother in the Los Agustinos neighborhood of San Cristobal, where patrolling soldiers have strung coils to control protesters who lob rocks and Molotov cocktails. "I'm tired of waiting five or six hours in line for a kilo of flour.".....................
“VALENCIA, Venezuela (AP) — A university student beauty queen was mourned Friday in the provincial Venezuelan city where she was slain this week during a political protest, a victim of what government opponents say is indiscriminate violence used by President Nicolas Maduro and his supporters to stifle dissent across the country.
Family members and friends of 22-year-old Genesis Carmona say the former Miss Tourism 2013 for the central Venezuelan state of Carabobo was shot down by members of the armed militias known as “colectivos” who opened fire on a demonstration in Valencia on Tuesday.
The government says the incident is under investigation, and Maduro said at a news conference Friday that it has been “well-established” by ballistics experts that shot came from the opposition protesters. Mourners at the private Mass and graveside memorial for Carmona said they have no doubt which side fired the fatal round.
“She wanted to support her country and, well, look what it cost her for going out with a flag and a whistle. Killed by government mercenaries,” said Jose Gil, an uncle of Carmona.
The violence drew condemnation Friday from U.S. based watchdog group Human Rights Watch, which said “Venezuelan security forces have used excessive and unlawful force against protesters on multiple occasions since February 12, 2014, including beating detainees and shooting at crowds of unarmed people.”
The report also said “the government has censored the news media, blocking transmission of a TV channel and threatening to prosecute news outlets for their coverage of the violence.”......................................
“SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (AP) — The battle for Venezuela is being fought as vigorously online as in the streets, with Internet service cut off to a strife-torn university city and the government blocking selected websites and a “walkie-talkie” service widely used by protesters.
Internet connectivity was gradually restored to San Cristobal, capital of the western border state of Tachira, Friday morning after an outage of more than 30 hours that also affected smartphones.
The tense streets smelled like burned trash after another night in which police firing tear gas broke up protests as they had Wednesday night when Internet service was cut.....
.....On Thursday night, the U.S. company Zello told The Associated Press that Venezuela’s state-run telecoms company, CANTV, had blocked access to the push-to-talk “walkie-talkie” app for smartphones and computers that has been a hugely popular organizing tool for protesters from Egypt to Ukraine.....
....The socialist government cemented its near-monopoly on broadcast media during Chavez’s 14-year rule, and social media have been crucial for young opposition activists as they organize and exchange information on deaths, injuries and arrests.
Activists also reported a serious nationwide degradation in Internet service provided by CANTV, which handles about 90 percent of the country’s traffic.
Websites blocked included NTN24.com, run by the eponymous Colombia-based regional news network, and online pastebin.com bulletin boards that cyberactivists use to anonymously share information.”.....
In my house I’m the one who changes the channels or I just move to a different room and watch a tv that responds to my interests
Thanks for posting. Very interesting.
“Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has invited US President Barack Obama to join him in talks aimed at resolving the problems between the two countries........”
Socialism devolving into tyranny. Who’da thunkit? Perhaps KingHussein could send the FCC and some alphabet agencies to fix it, show them how its done with a “hope and change” happy face. Give them the “charter of negative liberties” as road map.
Cynically amusing to see CNN reporters who are among the worst of fellow travelers catch beating from their own kind
Dictators always seize control of the media.
See the article on FCC invading newsrooms, for information on how the current administration is taking control of the media and how the democrats and the media are happy with the march towards fascism.
History repeats itself:
Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code (1927)...counter-revolutionary activities. "Counter-revolutionary activities" means anything the commissars want it to mean.
Here in the USA, the Clown occupant of the Oval Office *ALREADY* controls the hearts and minds of 95% of the media and so-called objective “journalists”....
I’m sure °-bama/we have eyes & ears on everything goin down down there, not to worry!
Thankfully, Emperor Maduro hasn’t lost MSNBC.
Thanks for posting this data.
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