A People Defends its Democracy Against Media Power

Venezuela Changes the Terms of the Global Debate

By Maximilien Arvelaiz
Professor, Narco News School of Authentic Journalism

December 10, 2002

CARACAS, 1O:30 P.M., DECEMBER 9, 2002: Enough already with the lies: At the hour that I write you the people of Venezuela have left their homes to rescue their petroleum industry and put an end to the lies of the Venezuelan private-sector media. Thousands and thousands of Venezuelans assemble peacefully in front of the headquarters of Globovision, Venevision, RCTV, Televen and Meridiano TV in Caracas. And in the city of Maracay, the people have taken TV5 and the daily El Aragüeño, calling upon President Chávez “to govern,” and referring to the mass media as “media terrorists.” Other groups march now toward the offices of the newspaper El Nacional.

For more than a year the Venezuelan Media has substituted the opposition political parties, fabricating an absolute matrix of opinion against the democratic government of President Chávez. We have warned that what is in play in Venezuela is the future of the majorities in a mediated democracy. There are few words to describe what we are living: a people, determined to defend its democracy and its Constitution against those who, last April, promoted, participated in and approved of a coup d’etat. Since the return to power by the president they have not stopped conspiring, as they demonstrated on Friday, December 6th with their broadcast of a fake video (that was meant to link an assassin with the government).

Freedom of speech and the press is not in danger. Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) demanded that the government put an end to this popular insurrection. In previous days, the OAS chief and former Colombian president never denounced the pro-coup labors of the Venezuelan commercial media: a labor decorated by the government of Spain which delivered the King of Spain Prize to Venevision for its famous video from Llaguno Bridge last April. Spain, which chaired the European Union last April, was one of the first governments to recognize the fascist government of (April’s Dictator-for-a-Day) Pedro Carmona Estanga, also known as “The Brief One.”

The Venezuelan People, once again, are showing a lesson to the entire world, defending their democracy from the pro-coup terrorism that exists through the power of the Commercial Media.

Maximilien Arvelaiz, a French citizen of Venezuelan descent, an advisor to the Venezuelan government on media and communications issues, is such a shrewd analyst of the crisis of media in our era – and the solutions from below to this problem imposed from above – that we have named him as a distinguished professor of the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism.

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