Not About Free Speech: The Case of Venezuela's RCTV

The claims of the opposition and the foreign press, which assert a veritable "trampling" of human rights and press freedom, rest on a series of faulty claims:

1.) The Venezuelan government is behaving abnormally.

Central to the opposition's framing of the issue is the broad background of a slide toward authoritarianism and fascism. According to many, Venezuela has stepped decidedly outside the democratic norms governing behavior in the post-Cold War world, and the non-renewal of RCTV's concession is proof of this ab-normality.

This, however, could not be further from the case. The Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 does boast the most stringent requirements imposed by any constitution on the private media, enforcing above all a broad notion of "responsibility" on the latter. Media magnates have expressed a clear concern over this provision, and with good reason, since they had been operating irresponsibly for quite some time.

Were this constitutional provision fully enforced and legislated, the private media might be able to claim that their existence is somehow more difficult than other media outlets the world over. But as it stands, legal requirements and enforcement are hardly out of the ordinary. The Ley Resorte, or media responsibility law, has as its objective the "social responsibility of radio and television service providers," and has been credited with both protecting the rights of children and increasing the amount of domestically-produced programming.

However, the idea that media concessions entail responsibility is not at all unique. Even the U.S. FCC maintains a similar position, notwithstanding the swift de-regulation during the early years of the Reagan administration. As we all know, the FCC maintains certain content restrictions on broadcasting (more strict, it should be mentioned, than in many European nations), and is not unwilling to silence those who infringe upon these restrictions. Moreover, ever since the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction," the enforcement of such restrictions has been ratcheted up (as in, e.g., FCC efforts to shut down infamous radio host Howard Stern, not to mention the continuous closure of smaller outfits).

And we are only speaking here of so-called "obscenity," which doesn't even compare to the charges against RCTV, which as is well-known, actively participated in a conspiracy which brought about several deaths and used those deaths to provoke a coup in April of 2002. This was followed by an equally active participation in the oil sabotage of December of the same year, which crippled the Venezuelan economy toward the same end.

While this provides little justification, it is worth mentioning how many FBI visits have been occasioned by "threats" against George W. Bush, despite the fact that these have been isolated and individual incidents, not the sort of organized rebellion and premeditated murder endorsed by the Venezuelan media.

2.) "Human rights" are being violated.

In his first significant intervention since being named vice president, Jorge Rodriguez spoke on the subject of RCTV at the swearing-in of Chávez's new ministerial train. He began from the dictionary definition of "concession": "the juridical means by which the administration cedes to a person the privative use of something in the public domain, or the management of a public service, for a determinate period of time and under certain conditions." Rodríguez added that "this is not Hugo Chávez saying this, this is in the dictionary."

And yet opposition media outlets attempt to paint the issue of the non-renewal of a concession as the violation of a human right. This "right" presumably means the right of a large private media conglomerate to have unrestricted access to a public good, to use and abuse this public good for profit without acquiring any responsibility. When RCTV head Marcel Granier wants to tug on liberal heartstrings, he adds in the claim that the human rights of the workers are being violated.

Yes, you heard right, RCTV (a division of business group 1BC) is concerned above all with their workers' rights. The government has been quick to point out in response that the concession is not being denied to the workers, and has actively encouraged RCTV workers to organize into a collective and request that the concession be granted to themselves.

3.) The government is "closing" a media outlet.

Many, moreover, have claimed that the government is unilaterally "closing" a media outlet, and that to do so represents a sort of quantitative attack on free speech. The fewer media outlets there are, so the argument goes, the less free the press.

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