Ms. Ann Cooper, info@cpj.org
Director
Committee to Protect Journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Avenue, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10001, USA
Phone: (212) 465-1004
FAX: (212) 465-9568
CC: CPJ "Americas Coordinators" Marylene Smeets
and Sauro González Rodríguez, americas@cpj.org,
media@cpj.org
CC: Immedia Working Group, salonchingon@hotmail.com
Dear Ms. Cooper,
My name is Al Giordano. I have been a professional journalist since 1988 and today I write you in my capacity as publisher of The Narco News Bulletin - www.narconews.com -- an online newspaper that reports on the drug war and democracy from Latin America.
It was our publication that, in December 2001, won the landmark New York Supreme Court ruling that extended First Amendment rights under Sullivan v. NY Times to Internet journalists. A copy of that decision can be read online at the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/BNM_v_Narco_News/20011205_decision.html
Today, Narco News, together with colleagues in authentic journalism and independent media around the world, has launched an international dialogue about the role of "press freedom" organizations. We are focusing on the three such organizations with the largest budgets: the New York-based CPJ, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association.
The catalyst for this international dialogue, which we have begun on our own website as well as through the www.indymedia.org networks and others, was our recent fact-finding mission to Venezuela, where we encountered a very different set of circumstances and facts than those described by the Committee to Protect Journalists' statements regarding events in Venezuela.
In fact, we found that an entire class of journalists in Venezuela is under attack and has been left undefended by your organization and the other large-budget "press freedom" organizations: the journalists of the Community Media, particularly those from the 25 non-profit TV and radio stations that were legalized under Venezuela's Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 and the Telecommunications Law of 2001.
Specifically, we bring your attention to the grave matter of the unjust imprisonment by rogue police forces (the same ones that participated in the April 2002 coup attempt in that country) of three important and respected radio journalists: Nicolás Rivera of Radio Perola, and Jorge Quintero and Lenín Méndez of Radio Senderos, who report for non-profit Community Broadcasters in the greater Caracas area.
We also bring your attention to serious threats against these journalists and others like them that have come not from governmental institutions, but, rather, from commercial media institutions.
Specifically, this threat has been executed by Miguel Angel Martínez, the president of the private-sector Chamber of Radio Broadcasters who recently called upon his organization's affiliates to "interfere" with the frequencies of the Community Media outlets during the next coup d'etat attempt in Venezuela (Mr. Martínez was a co-signer, last April 12th, with the military-installed dictator Pedro Carmona, of the decree that abolished the national Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution in Venezuela.)
Today, we published Part I of a series reported from Venezuela that contains more details on the current situation and the threats against journalists:
http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html
This series is also published in Spanish, at:
http://www.narconews.com/medioscomunitarios1.html
It is clear to me, based on my first-hand reporting, that the entire matter of press freedom in Venezuela turns conventional and outmoded thinking about "freedom of the press" on its head (much as our legal defense against Banamex-Citigroup caused the New York Supreme Court to rethink and expand upon existing First Amendment protections, applying them to Internet journalists).
This international dialogue - and I hope you and others from CPJ will participate in a spirit of full disclosure, self-criticism, self-correction and open-mindedness - has many aspects, precisely because it is long overdue.
For the purposes of this letter, I begin with four key matters:
A. First, there is the question, often asked in documents and statements by the Committee to Protect Journalists: "Who is a journalist?" We find that these Community Journalists in Venezuela certainly qualify as journalists based on your organization's own prior declarations, but that your organization's stated principles have not, so far, been complied with in your actions. Thus, journalists at risk are left undefended by the very international organizations that exist, in your own words, to protect them.
B. Second, there is the delicate matter of how CPJ will address the worrisome trend in which commercial media corporations are increasingly posing threats to the press freedom of independent media, community media, non-profit media and Internet journalists. The situation in Venezuela provides a very urgent challenge for CPJ and other organizations like it. Because, unfortunately, the actions of your organization and others have clearly prioritized the defense of "paid speech" (commercial journalism) over "free speech" (community and independent journalism). As a result, I repeat: Journalists are at grave risk today.
C. Third, there is the question of how the funding of your organization causes, at very least, the appearance of a conflict-of-interest regarding selective defense of commercial media journalists over non-profit media journalists, because such a large percentage of your funding does come from commercial media corporations or their foundations. I will address this matter very specifically in a moment.
D. Fourth, and perhaps the most difficult matter, is the question of the use of speech by sectors of Civil Society who are not, per se, journalists to criticize and counter abuses by the commercial media. Your organization has increasingly denounced the use of speech both by citizens and their elected leaders in Venezuela and portrayed such speech as a "threat" against press freedom. As a journalist who has survived various and well-known attacks against my own freedom to publish, and who has nonetheless published more than 1,000 articles in the commercial press and more than 500 articles in the independent media, I beg you and your organization to reconsider the slippery slope you have entered by defining - in the case of Venezuela - speech itself as a "threat" to speech. I, and other journalists like me, feel very strongly that the opposite is true: that the only solution to "bad" speech is more speech, and that your organization has made a grave error and causes harm to your own stated mission through your increasing attempts to inhibit free speech by a society that is increasingly harmed by the abuses of the commercial media.
I will now elaborate on each of these four general areas of discussion, to which I will add specific questions for you and your organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists. As addendum, I will repeat our questions to you, in numerical order, in the hope of obtaining clear and forthright answers.
Obviously, some of the issues raised here may be difficult, and you may well disagree with the opinions expressed in Part I and future segments of our series on the media in Venezuela, particularly as they pertain to your organization. For that reason, I offer you the opportunity to respond on the pages of Narco News, and will publish your responses in full without censorship on our pages.
In his introduction to "Attacks on the Press in 1997," William A. Orme, Jr. of the Committee to Protect Journalists states, in my opinion wisely:
"We are also sometimes accused of defending people - the imprisoned, even the dead - who are in the view of some not really journalists. This is a critique we respectfully reject."
Mr. Orme continues:
"In every reported case of a press freedom abuse, CPJ must first determine the people involved were journalists and the attack or prosecution was related in some direct way to their profession. This is necessarily a somewhat subjective process. Who is a journalist? For the purposes of our work, we define the profession as broadly as possible. Journalists who are sentenced to prison or targeted for assassination include renowned newspaper editors and struggling provincial stringers, political polemicists and by-the-book news service reporters, star television correspondents and shoestring community radio activists. In totalitarian societies, where by definition there is no independent journalism, dissident pamphleteers or pirate radio operators will be defended by CPJ if punished for what they have written or broadcast. Journalists jailed for campaigning for freedom of expression also get our support: If journalists don't stand up for other journalists who are fighting for press freedom, who will?
"We will also defend as journalists those who would not define themselves primarily as journalists: That is because governments sometimes define people into our profession for us by prosecuting them for what they have published in newspapers or said on the radio…."
(Source: http://www.cpj.org/attacks97/introduction.html )
This was a wonderful statement by Mr. Orme. My first question for you is:
1. Does the 1997 statement by William Orme on behalf of the Committee to Protect Journalists, broadly defining "who is a journalist," continue to represent the position of CPJ?
This 1997 CPJ statement applies very clearly to "shoestring community radio activists." In your organization's own words, the Community Media journalists of Venezuela clearly are defined as journalists worthy of the protection your organization says it offers.
And yet, in all of CPJ's statements regarding press freedom issues in Venezuela, you have maintained a complete silence regarding the serious threats - including unjust imprisonment, raids, seizures, censorship, theats of electronic interference by commercial broadcasters and violence and torture - against the Community Media outlets of Venezuela. It seems to me that in your organization's misguided obsession over the Chávez government, you selectively defend only those journalists - and commercial journalists at that - who are opposed to that government. Again, this situation is admittedly different than that in many countries because what is called "pirate" media in the United States, for example, has been legalized in Venezuela. And it is also different than the situation in many countries because the elected government of Venezuela has pioneered, more than any other nation-state, the legalization and defense of Community Broadcasters. The threats have, instead, come either from the private sector or from pro-coup elements of rogue or opposition police agencies.
My next questions are:
2. Will CPJ, now having been reminded of its own stated definition and mission, investigate and denounce the illegal detentions of radio journalists Nicolás Rivera of Radio Perola, and Jorge Quintero and Lenín Méndez of Radio Senderos?
3. Will CPJ address the root cause of these attacks: the existence of rogue police forces and coup-plotters that enjoy a particular kind of impunity precisely because they are supported by the commercial media corporations of Venezuela?
4. Will CPJ finally denounce the illegal raids and threats on April 11th, 12th and 13th 2002 by the Carmona dictatorship against Radio Perola, Radio Catia Libre, TV Catia and Radio Fé y Alegría (broadcaster of the Catholic Church)?
5. Will CPJ finally denounce the April coup attempt - and any future coup attempts in Venezuela or against any democratically elected government on earth - as a prima facie threat to press freedom?
6. Will CPJ consider a public apology to the Community Media journalists of Venezuela, and to the public at large, for having been "asleep at the wheel" in not having denounced the coup d'etat as it was happening last April, and make the internal organizational corrections to ensure that this kind of negligence by a press-freedom organization will never happen again during a time of crisis?
7. Finally, of particular interest to those of us who are Internet journalists (and of obvious personal interest to Narco News and me): Does the Committee to Protect Journalists embrace the case law established by the New York Supreme Court in December 2001 in the case of Banco v. Menéndez et al, which established, A. a higher standard upon Plaintiffs in libel lawsuits for establishing jurisdiction on foreign journalists in U.S. courts, and; B. the landmark ruling that extended First Amendment protections (under Sullivan v. NY Times) to Internet journalists if we engage in responsible and basic journalistic practices?
In particular, because this case was international by nature - a lawsuit against journalists in Mexico for reports published in Mexico about events and a Plaintiff from Mexico, but filed in U.S. courts - this case clearly fits under the international mission of CPJ. Because CPJ has already acknowledged that, in certain cases, Internet journalists are journalists worthy of protection, it seems that the endorsement and defense of this court victory (which was not appealed and is now final) would naturally be embraced by CPJ. Still, an affirmative statement to that end would be helpful to the protection of all Internet journalists throughout the world.
These are difficult times for the profession of journalism and for journalists, because, increasingly, the threats to our safety and free speech are coming from within the industry itself: from the corporate owners of TV, radio, print and commercial Internet news organizations.
Again, the attempted coup in Venezuela last April was a watershed moment that revealed this problem, now of epidemic proportions, to the global public.
The landscape of journalism itself has changed radically in recent years, with the wave of mergers and acquisitions and the increased concentration of media ownership in the hands of fewer and fewer companies. Many, if not most, of these companies are no longer exclusively dedicated to news gathering and reporting. The conflicts-of-interest by news organizations with the extracurricular financial interests of their own owners thus pile up like traffic at rush hour. Commercial journalism has lost its ethical and societal compass and strayed very far from the role envisioned and protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and similar laws in other lands. When it comes to threats to press freedom, the media has met the enemy and, to quote Pogo, "it is us."
This radical change in the news gathering environment - a change from above and from within the media industry - forces, in my opinion, any organization dedicated to the protection of journalists and press-freedom to reassess and correct its activities bringing them up to date with the times and the actual situation. Obviously, this is a cause for soul-searching by all of us who are journalists or who wish to be authentic journalists, and for the organizations that defend our rights. And yet the change in reality is so sudden and extreme that we must rethink almost all of our past assumptions.
I have outlined a very large process that will take time and deliberation, I am sure, if it is addressed at all. But specifically regarding the crisis of journalism within the commercial media of Venezuela - and because Community Journalists are at risk right now - this matter can and should be addressed immediately by CPJ.
Obviously, CPJ must respond to a large volume of cases and at times this work is akin to being in a MASH unit: you must practice a kind of triage and prioritize which cases are most important to publicize and advocate.
However, it is also obvious that the attempted coup d'etat in Venezuela, which threatened to turn back the clocks of democracy and press-freedom thirty years in the entire hemisphere, is a matter that should take priority over all other threats against press freedom. If that coup d'etat had succeeded, your job would have become a hundred times more difficult not only in Venezuela, but in your role of protecting journalists throughout Latin America (just as the 1973 coup in Chile caused a chain reaction of repression and attacks against the press throughout South America with Operation Condor spreading the terror to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Perú, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s).
Specifically, regarding the ongoing present-day situation in Venezuela, there is no reason or justification to wait: Action is needed now, immediately, to address and correct root causes of threats to press freedom and against journalists. And to do this task effectively, CPJ and other organizations like it must correct errors already made.
My next set of questions is:
8. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the censorship by all of the commercial television stations in Venezuela on April 12th and 13th 2002 against their own journalists, that - nobody today disputes that there was a news blackout - prevented their own journalists from reporting the facts about the counter-coup by Civil Society against the military-installed dictatorship of those days?
9. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the threats by Miguel Angel Martínez of the Chamber of Radio Broadcasters to "interfere" with the frequencies of Community radio and TV broadcasters utilizing the technology and equipment of the commercial broadcasters affiliated with his organization?
10. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the forced closure of Channel 8 - the public television network in Venezuela - by the Carmona dictatorship in April 2002 and the complete silence by the commercial media about this threat upon a public media outlet?
11. What is CPJ's position on the participation by commercial news gathering organizations such as the daily El Nacional and the daily La Hora in Venezuela in censoring their own pages last April 9th in order to join a politically-partisan "national strike" that - it is clear to everyone, in retrospect - had the goal of provoking the April 11th coup d'etat?
I will address some of the issues regarding Question # 11 in a moment, when we discuss, below, whether public speech is, in reality, a threat to public speech, as CPJ has repeatedly claimed regarding Venezuela.
But first, I ask you to forthrightly address questions about CPJ's financing and whether it causes either conflicts-of-interest or appearance of conflicts.
Up front, I wish to praise the Committee to Protect Journalist for disclosing, in a detailed manner, the sources of your organization's funding. We do the same at Narco News, on our website as you do, so that the public may be informed. I congratulate you for that particularly because you do it in a more comprehensive manner than the other two large international press freedom organizations that we have invited into this international dialogue; Reporters Without Borders and the Inter-American Press Association.
The late Judith Moses, a CPJ board member and tireless advocate of press freedom, told me in the year 2000 that there are times when funding comes with strings attached to the Committee for Protection of Journalists. For example, explained Judith, the Ford Foundation - one of your major financiers that also finances the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the United States - insists on certain divisions of labor between the two organizations regarding domestic vs. foreign threats on press freedom. There is certainly nothing wrong with donors specifying the nature of their contributions as long as such instructions are fully disclosed to the public. But I think you should fully disclose that arrangement and any others like it.
My next questions are:
12. Given that so much of CPJ's funding comes from commercial news organizations, profit-making corporations or their non-profit foundations, how does CPJ guard against allowing the reality of funding sources to determine a more vigorous defense of "paid speech" by commercial journalists over the press freedoms that truly involve "free speech" by non-profit, community, independent, shoestring or low-budget Internet publications?
13. What safeguards, if any, has CPJ put in place to assure that media companies that donate to CPJ do not get favorable treatment over journalists who either don't contribute to your organization or who, because they are not wealthy, have not been able to contribute to your work?
14. Specifically regarding the situation in Venezuela: One of your contributors is the Cisneros Group of Venezuela, owners of Venevision TV, one of the companies that censored its own journalists in April 2002 from reporting on the counter-coup underway in that country. Have the Cisneros Group's contributions prevented CPJ or made you reluctant to criticize the threats against press freedom caused by the Cisneros Group's own actions during the crisis of last April?
In a few cases, and to your credit, at least in other countries, CPJ has defended Community Radio journalists, and even sometimes those working in Pirate Radio (on eight occasions over the past seven years). But the vast majority of attacks against non-commercial journalists have not been addressed by CPJ: regarding the systematic attacks by pro-coup forces in Venezuela, CPJ has remained completely silent on these kinds of attacks.
15. Does your more aggressive and active defense of commercial journalists than of non-profit journalists reflect the realities of fundraising in this era?
It comes down to this for CPJ: Do you represent journalists or the industry that funds you? Because the protection of journalists means, also, protection from the media industry and, often, its business agendas that corrupt its sense of fairness and practice of journalism.
For example, since 1999, beginning with the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle and continuing regularly during similar anti-globalization protests throughout the world - in Davos, Genoa, Cancún and other cities - there has been a systematic series of violent attacks and jailings of journalists, photojournalists and video-journalists who have covered those demonstrations. These attacks have been extensively documented, photographed and filmed and published on the more than 90 Internet sites of www.indymedia.org throughout the world. But the Committee to Protect Journalists, despite the systematic and repeat nature of these attacks on journalists, has been, to my knowledge, silent in the defense of these journalists.
There is a polemic among some commercial journalists who say that these independent journalists are not real journalists. However, I remind you of your organization's 1997 statements by William Orme, quoted above, that declare, unequivocally, that this kind of journalism also deserves your active protection.
I urge you to address this issue with total seriousness: These attacks against Indymedia journalists are systematic and have enjoyed a savage impunity, in part, because authorities know that the major international press freedom organizations like CPJ have not spoken loudly or clearly against them. These attacks will likely continue during every anti-globalization protest to come until the press-freedom organizations end your silence on them.
One of the root causes of these attacks has to do with a conflict within journalism. Typically, during the global meetings of the World Trade Organization and similar groups, a caste system of credentialing journalists has resulted: Journalists for commercial news organizations are accredited and may practice their work with the usual assumptions of safety and protection. But independent media journalists are not accredited by these organizations and governments, and thus are left in the streets with the demonstrators, often beaten or jailed precisely because they are present with cameras or tape-recorders or pen-and-paper. They are specifically singled out for violent beatings and imprisonment because they are journalists.
The commercial news organizations, by and large, are in favor of this State-enforced "caste system" among journalists for obvious and interested motives: The credentialing only of commercial journalists at such global news events gives commercial news organizations a competitive advantage, indeed, a monopoly, on coverage of the deliberations inside these gatherings where governments and industry meet, often deciding questions of great public importance.
Thus, the very act of refusing to credential non-profit, community, independent or Internet journalists causes danger and harm to many of us, as has been documented time and time again during each of these events.
My questions regarding this matter are:
16. Has CPJ's financing from commercial media organizations caused your staff to ignore these systematic and violent attacks on independent journalists during these world trade meetings across the globe?
17. Should CPJ address and denounce the exclusion of non-profit, independent, community and Internet journalists from press credentials by governments and trade organizations as threats upon press freedom?
I remind that the single-greatest determinative factor in whether a journalist covering one of these world trade gatherings is beaten, jailed or harmed is whether the journalist has been denied credentials to cover the event on the inside. The question of credentialing of journalists, thus, is a serious matter of the safety of journalists: Those left outside in the streets to cover the event are placed at risk and in harm's way.
A related question:
18. Will CPJ, now that this matter has been brought to your attention, assign its staff to monitor and investigate these predictable attacks during future world trade meetings and anti-globalization protests?
This can be easily begun with the simple commitment to monitor reports on www.indymedia.org and similar websites as these events are happening. The archives of these sites, in fact, contain the documentary evidence, including photographs, videotapes, audiotapes, and eyewitness testimony, of the systematic attacks that have already occurred.
I include this matter in this section on CPJ's financing because, at very least, the perception of a conflict-of-interest exists: your commercial media and corporate donors favor the exclusion of independent journalists from being credentialed to cover these important events. They are generally silent about these attacks, or, on many occasions, have offered biased reporting that seems to justify these attacks on their colleagues in journalism.
I would suggest that this reality makes it even more important that a press-freedom organization like CPJ undertake the task that the commercial media refuses to do: The documentation, accurate reporting and public advocacy against these attacks and the selective credentialing process that is at their root. On the most basic level, these are attacks against journalism itself, not just journalists, and even if the commercial news organizations do not have the wisdom or day-to-day moral compass to defend their independent colleagues, an organization named the Committee to Protect Journalists ought to fill the vacuum and undertake a vigorous defense of these journalists at risk. I urge and beg you to do just that.
In February 2001, CPJ published a major report titled "Radio Chávez," which appears online at:
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2001/Ven_feb01/Ven_feb01.html
The report states:
"Chávez relies on direct access to his supporters, allowing him to marginalize all other institutions, including the press. He has maintained a consistently antagonistic attitude toward the media. His diatribes have to some extent undermined the credibility of the press, making local journalists vulnerable to legal and even physical attacks."
There are so many errant, and hypocritical statements for a "free speech" organization to have made in this report that it is difficult for me to know where to begin. I stress that I make these comments as a journalist and this matter is at the root of why, today, Narco News and our networks of authentic journalists and independent media have launched an international dialogue about the role of "press freedom" organizations.
I must honestly tell you, and it pains me to say it, but I feel that the Committee to Protect Journalists has betrayed its self-proclaimed mission with this kind of discourse against free speech.
What you at CPJ are denouncing here is speech itself: and I, for one, don't believe I am at all alone in wondering how a press-freedom organization could engage in such an Orwellian discourse, so harmful to the bedrock principles of free speech and press freedom.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes no distinctions: Free speech rights belong to all. It does not "license" some citizens to enjoy these rights above others.
Likewise, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
"Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice."
It does not say "some people" shall have the right to freedom of expression. It does not say "everyone except for elected leaders." It says, plain and simple, that "everyone" enjoys these rights.
And yet the implication in your organization's snidely-penned and shallow discourse about the use of speech by Chávez is that the elected president of a nation should not utilize his rights to speak if those rights include criticizing a commercial media that - as the events of April 2002 proved beyond a reasonable doubt - has worked not as a participant in democracy but has, overwhelmingly and to the point of supporting a coup d'etat, become, as an industry, the single-largest threat to free speech by the people - the "everyone" that is cited in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - of our era.
And by its active role in the deterioration of the free speech rights of all the people, the commercial media has merely manufactured a boomerang upon its own rights: I should not have lecture experts in "press freedom" about this dynamic - your organization has, in words, said the same thing many times, but in deeds has not complied with your self-stated mission.
The commercial media, not just in Venezuela, but especially in Venezuela, has denied voice to the majority of citizens, particularly the poor majority, and thus frozen them out of the public discourse. Instead, it has reserved access to the airwaves only for the wealthiest sectors - in Latin America, these sectors are accurately known as the oligarchy - but nonetheless the public found a superior medium through which to speak: fair and free elections.
I need not remind your organization that prior to the 1998 landslide election of Chávez as president of Venezuela, and the five subsequent elections in which, in each vote, the public backed his programs and allies overwhelmingly, that Venezuela, under its old regimes, was a more dangerous country for journalists than it is today by every measure.
According to the 1991-1992 annual report of PROVEA, Venezuela's leading human rights group, in that year there were 125 distinct attacks upon individual journalists in that country: physical beatings, interference, threats, legal persecution, raids, seizures, imprisonment, and firings of journalists specifically related to their work as journalists. In that year, the front pages of the nation's newspapers would regularly have entire sections blocked out and marked "CENSURADO," censored, because governmental authorities ordered that specific stories not be published.
Before the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999, which guarantees press freedom in that country to a degree that never existed prior, there were laws on the books that expressly forbade freedom of the press: the 1940 Telecommunications Act allowing for prior censorship, by the government, of every media; harsh penalties for any reporter who did not reveal his confidential sources to the government; a code of military and government secrecy; later came the 1994 law requiring that any citizen, to legally practice journalism, must have a college degree (which, in a poor country with a terrible education system was akin to a ban on press freedom by the majority of its citizens). There was a law on "state secrets" that stated "national administrative public records are, by their nature, reserved for official use."
Today, as a direct result of the choices, democratically made, by the majority of Venezuela's citizens, there is more press freedom than has ever existed in Venezuela. But your organization's ideological blinders have prevented you from acknowledging the fast progress and good work that has been accomplished. Until last month, when the pro-coup forces unjustly arrested journalist Nicolás Rivera, not a single journalist was in prison in Venezuela under the Chávez government.
Let me, please, analyze some of your organization's most inaccurate and outrageous statements from that February 2001 report. CPJ wrote:
"Chávez relies on direct access to his supporters, allowing him to marginalize all other institutions, including the press."
Please explain, as part of this international dialogue on the role of "press freedom" organizations, how "relying on direct access to his supporters" thus "allows" Chávez "to marginalize all other institutions, including the press"?
Chávez is hardly the only elected leader who speaks directly to the public via the airwaves. You would be hard pressed to find any leader - from George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him to Vicente Fox and his weekly radio show in Mexico - who do not avail themselves of that same "direct access."
The flip side of that coin - ignored by CPJ in this hypocritical document - is the right of the public to have "direct access" to its elected leaders.
In fact, this entire "Radio Chávez" report smacks of an elitism and hostility toward the public and its free speech and other democratic rights. CPJ writes that Chávez has:
"…maintained a consistently antagonistic attitude toward the media. His diatribes have to some extent undermined the credibility of the press, making local journalists vulnerable to legal and even physical attacks."
This is as if to say that the public has no legitimate grievances with a corrupted and interested commercial media that has denied it voice in a systematic and serial manner for years, dating well before Chávez was elected president. The public, in the fantasy world of this CPJ document and others like it, is portrayed as consisting of mere sheep who blindly follow their elected leader.
I am a journalist who has spoken, face to face, with hundreds of members of the public on all sides of the political disputes in Venezuela - specifically to investigate issues of press freedom, the behavior of the media (commercial and community journalists alike) and public attitudes about the press - and I tell you: CPJ is so inaccurate and wrong on this matter that it has undermined its own credibility as a defender of press freedom.
The "undermining" of the "credibility of the press" in Venezuela has one author and one author only: The commercial press has undermined its own credibility. As a class, the commercial media in Venezuela, and particularly in the capital city of Caracas, is the shoddiest, most unprofessional, most inaccurate, most anti-pluralistic, and most un-credible regional media in the entire hemisphere, perhaps save that in Paraguay. To blame that on Chávez, as CPJ has done, is insulting to the Venezuelan public. It reverses the process of which came first: Undermined press credibility or Chávez? CPJ states that Chávez is the cause of undermined press credibility. Today I inform you that he is not the cause, but, rather, the result of it. And when he criticizes the corrupt behavior of the media in that country, he truly represents the views of a majority of the public that elected him, in part, to be a bulwark against the abuses by the commercial media.
The portrayal of the public as led around by the nose by its elected leader is elitist and hostile to democratic values, and as a journalist and as a citizen I expect more from an organization that claims to protect journalists and press freedom. At very least, I - and others like me - expect a considered exploration of both sides of the Venezuela story, and not the one-sided fictional account that CPJ has now offered for four years.
When, in this document, your organization quotes Sergio Dahbar, associate editor at El Nacional, as saying, "This government doesn't know how to handle ... the possibility that many ideas can coexist in a society" - and then you lift out his quote as if you are saying it yourselves in the visual presentation of this document - you are quoting, in fact, an official of a newspaper that is more guilty of that accusation than the government it accuses.
I would urge you, strongly, for example to interview El Nacional reporter Vanessa Davies - a nationally respected, award winning, champion of investigative journalism in Venezuela - as I have done. Ms. Davies - as well as the representatives of the union at El Nacional - can explain to CPJ precisely how it is the censorious management of El Nacional that "doesn't know how to handle… the possibility that many ideas can coexist in a society." Ms. Davies has been censored from writing about political matters at that paper, as have others. I would urge you read, as I do, daily El Nacional's website: there is only one set of ideas allowed in that newspaper, and a constant campaign of disinformation against any other set of ideas. It is one of the worst, most inaccurate and knowingly dishonest newspapers in all América. And if your staff at all took the time to read that newspaper, its published reporters and columnists, it would reach the same conclusion.
So many of CPJ's statements and fears expressed about the Chávez government in Venezuela are in the realm of the hypothetical, like this one:
"Is Chávez a new and improved Latin American populist, out to transform Venezuela's corrupt political culture for the people's sake? Or is he an aspiring Latin American strongman who will turn repressive when his popularity starts to wane?"
This discourse is almost verbatim lifted from the propaganda of the United States government and the Otto Reich regime in the State Department regarding Venezuela, and it reveals a partiality, bias and myopia that is unbecoming of a serious "press freedom" organization.
I remind you that all the hypothetical fears you have expressed over four years regarding Venezuela have not come true, in terms of the actions of the elected government there. To the contrary, the forces that have "turned repressive" are the factions that your organization has consistently championed: the corrupted commercial media - including El Nacional and your financier The Cisneros Group - who have forced a censorship on their own reporters as part of their support for a bloody coup d'etat that abolished Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and launched - as Part I of our series reported from Venezuela documents - a systematic and violent campaign of attacks against the independent Community Media of Venezuela.
Impunity is a word that all of us who seek to defend press freedom must report on. I beg of you and your staff at the Committee to Protect Journalists to consider - and correct - the impunity that you have provided to the true usurpers of press freedom in Venezuela by your willful abandonment of the real journalists at risk in the Community Media of that country, and your unquestioning endorsement of the statements of interested and corrupted members of the commercial media who, during those three days in April 2002, demonstrated their hostility to the democratic and free-speech principles that your organization has attributed to them.
Your organization, in its drumbeat of inaccurate statements about Venezuela, and in the way you have shirked your role as defender of the truly threatened, and now imprisoned, journalists there, has done a great disservice to the very cause you claim to champion.
Unfortunately, if the rank-and-file public and its elected leaders of Venezuela or other countries told you this, you would probably accuse them of threatening your freedom of speech, as you have disingenuously and repeatedly claimed when the public has fought bad speech with more speech.
However, I remind you, this critique comes from a journalist, one who has had to defend, more than most (and less than some, thankfully), his own press freedom, who has won important legal rights for all journalists as a result, and who reflects the views of a great many authentic journalists and community media workers. We are now going to have this discussion within our profession: Journalists to journalists and speaking, in open public view, to the organizations that claim to protect us. It is not only our right, but our duty, to clean up our own profession, and to do it using the very weapon that we hold sacred: Speech.
Welcome to the dialogue. I hope you will enter it and answer each of the 18 questions above in a spirit of full disclosure, self-criticism and self-correction.
Your organization, in its behavior regarding Venezuela and its abandonment of persecuted journalists who don't agree with your inaccurate and interested assessment of what has occurred there, has done great harm to the very principles you are organized to defend.
It is time for you, Ms. Cooper, as an individual, and for every member of your staff and board of directors to do some soul-searching about your role. As a journalist, I ask: Do you exist to protect us or not?
You could start by protecting Nicolás Rivera and the Community Media journalists of Venezuela, in accordance with your own stated mission and rules, and by answering my 18 questions for you, which I will repeat, as addendum, below, for your convenience.
As your own William Orme stated in the introduction to your 1997 report:
"We have learned that international pressure, from journalists on behalf of their fellow journalists, can be highly effective."
And:
"If journalists don't stand up for other journalists who are fighting for press freedom, who will?"
And that is why I have written you this letter and 18 questions that, I hope you will agree, deserve thorough and self-critical answers.
Sincerely,
Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@hotmail.com
1. Does the 1997 statement by William Orme on behalf of the Committee to Protect Journalists, broadly defining "who is a journalist," continue to represent the position of CPJ?
2. Will CPJ, now having been reminded of its own stated definition and mission, investigate and denounce the illegal detentions of radio journalists Nicolás Rivera of Radio Perola, and Jorge Quintero and Lenín Méndez of Radio Senderos?
3. Will CPJ address the root cause of these attacks: the existence of rogue police forces and coup-plotters that enjoy a particular kind of impunity precisely because they are supported by the commercial media corporations of Venezuela?
4. Will CPJ finally denounce the illegal raids and threats on April 11th, 12th and 13th 2002 by the Carmona dictatorship against Radio Perola, Radio Catia Libre, TV Catia and Radio Fé y Alegría (broadcaster of the Catholic Church)?
5. Will CPJ finally denounce the April coup attempt - and any future coup attempts in Venezuela or against any democratically elected government on earth - as a prima facie threat to press freedom?
6. Will CPJ consider a public apology to the Community Media journalists of Venezuela, and to the public at large, for having been "asleep at the wheel" in not having denounced the coup d'etat as it was happening last April, and make the internal organizational corrections to ensure that this kind of negligence by a press-freedom organization will never happen again during a time of crisis?
7. Of particular interest to those of us who are Internet journalists (and of obvious personal interest to Narco News and me): Does the Committee to Protect Journalists embrace the case law established by the New York Supreme Court in December 2001 in the case of Banco v. Menéndez et al, which established, A. a higher standard upon Plaintiffs in libel lawsuits for establishing jurisdiction on foreign journalists in U.S. courts, and; B. the landmark ruling that extended First Amendment protections (under Sullivan v. NY Times) to Internet journalists if we engage in responsible and basic journalistic practices?
8. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the censorship by all of the commercial television stations in Venezuela on April 12th and 13th 2002 against their own journalists, that - nobody today disputes that there was a news blackout - prevented their own journalists from reporting the facts about the counter-coup by Civil Society against the military-installed dictatorship of those days?
9. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the threats by Miguel Angel Martínez of the Chamber of Radio Broadcasters to "interfere" with the frequencies of Community radio and TV broadcasters utilizing the technology and equipment of the commercial broadcasters affiliated with his organization?
10. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the forced closure of Channel 8 - the public television network in Venezuela - by the Carmona dictatorship in April 2002 and the complete silence by the commercial media about this threat upon a public media outlet?
11. What is CPJ's position on the participation by commercial news gathering organizations such as the daily El Nacional and the daily La Hora in Venezuela in censoring their own pages last April 9th in order to join a politically-partisan "national strike" that - it is clear to everyone, in retrospect - had the goal of provoking the April 11th coup d'etat?
12. Given that so much of CPJ's funding comes from commercial news organizations, profit-making corporations or their non-profit foundations, how does CPJ guard against allowing the reality of funding sources to determine a more vigorous defense of "paid speech" by commercial journalists over the press freedoms that truly involve "free speech" by non-profit, community, independent, shoestring or low-budget Internet publications?
13. What safeguards, if any, has CPJ put in place to assure that media companies that donate to CPJ do not get favorable treatment over journalists who either don't contribute to your organization or who, because they are not wealthy, have not been able to contribute to your work?
14. Specifically regarding the situation in Venezuela: One of your contributors is the Cisneros Group of Venezuela, owners of Globovision TV, one of the companies that censored its own journalists in April 2002 from reporting on the counter-coup underway in that country. Have the Cisneros Group's contributions prevented CPJ or made you reluctant to criticize the threats against press freedom caused by the Cisneros Group's own actions during the crisis of last April?
15. Does your more aggressive and active defense of commercial journalists than of non-profit journalists reflect the realities of fundraising in this era?
16. Has CPJ's financing from commercial media organizations caused your staff to ignore these systematic and violent attacks on independent journalists during these world trade meetings across the globe?
17. Should CPJ address and denounce the exclusion of non-profit, independent, community and Internet journalists from press credentials by governments and trade organizations as threats upon press freedom?
18. Will CPJ, now that this matter has been brought to your attention, assign its staff to monitor and investigate these predictable attacks during future world trade meetings and anti-globalization protests?
Read
Part I of This Series
Lea
Ud. Parte I en Español
Read
Our Letter to Reporters Without Borders
Read
Our Letter to the Interamerican Press Association
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