IPS-English LATIN AMERICA: Newspaper Owners Take Aim at Venezuela Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:16:03 -0800 Humberto Márquez CARACAS, Mar 31 (IPS) - The midyear meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), which represents newspaper owners in Latin America, was overshadowed by the antagonistic relationship between the commercial media and the government of Venezuela, where the meeting was held. ”We can't say there has been a deterioration, because at the meeting in Miami, six months ago, there were more reports of tension and murders in the region,” Gonzalo Marroquín, chairman of the IAPA (or SIP, in Spanish) press freedom committee, told journalists. But ”it cannot be said either that the situation has improved; the dangers simply persist,” said the Guatemalan editor, who reported that in the last six months, three reporters were killed in Mexico, one in Argentina and another in Honduras, while dozens have been the targets of threats, assaults or imprisonment in Colombia, Cuba and Peru. However, the condemnation of the killings and attacks took up just a few minutes and a few lines, in comparison to the hours and pages of controversy on the host country in the IAPA meeting, which was attended by some 300 people. ”Despite harassment by the Venezuelan government, its refusal to inaugurate the event and protest demonstrations held outside the hotel, the meeting came off successfully,” says the final report by the newspaper owners' meeting, referring to anti-IAPA protests staged by dozens of supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan parliament also complained about the presence of the IAPA leadership and representatives in its country, and the association alleged that the government exerted influence on several hotels, to get them to refuse to host the conference, which in the end was held in a posh hotel in Caracas. Almost all private media outlets in Venezuela are openly, and often rabidly, anti-Chávez. During a short-lived April 2002 coup that ousted the president for two days, the main media networks rallied Venezuelans to take part in an anti-Chávez march on the presidential palace, and cheered the president's removal, while coup leaders thanked the networks for their support. In addition, once Chávez returned to power, the stations did not cover the news, airing reruns and Hollywood movies instead. Parallel to the IAPA midyear meeting, a Latin American conference against media terrorism was held by a dozen journalists from several countries in the region and a similar number of reporters from Venezuela. The participants were all supporters of the Chávez administration, which has brought a broad range of social benefits to the poor. The forum on media terrorism discussed smear campaigns by the mainstream media against leftist or centre-left governments like those of Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Cristina Fernández in Argentina. ”Our forum was not organised as an anti-IAPA gathering, although it is impossible not to be opposed to IAPA, since those who promote media terrorism are represented in that organisation,” Freddy Fernández of the governmental Bolivarian News Agency remarked to IPS. ”But this is a meeting of journalists and that one is a meeting of newspaper owners.” The meeting on media terrorism accepted a proposal set forth by Eleazar Díaz Rangel, director of the Caracas newspaper Últimas Noticias, to ask governments in the region to urge the Organisation of American States to investigate the biased coverage of governments and elections by privately owned media. In Díaz Rangel's view, centre-left and leftwing leaders like former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and presidents Chávez, Morales, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua have been hurt since even before their election by campaigns waged by media outlets aligned with rightwing political currents. The IAPA, meanwhile, criticised Paraguay for ”the greatest increase in reports of verbal attacks on the media during the past six months.” In addition, it said that ”attacks aimed at undermining the credibility of the press were also noted in Uruguay, Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Argentina.” The conclusions of the IAPA midyear meeting further stated that the governments of Guyana, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Venezuela ”discriminated against newspapers because of their editorial policies by punishing or rewarding them through the placement of government advertising.” With respect to Venezuela, the meeting resolved to ”condemn the Chávez administration's violations of the human rights of journalists and media workers, and its constant threats, acts of intimidation, and abuses against the independent media.” The IAPA also denounced ”the Chávez administration's use of the currency exchange control system imposed in Venezuela, to limit the timely approval and granting of foreign currency for the importation of newsprint and other supplies necessary for the media to function normally”. The IAPA resolution ”is a manifesto of the Venezuelan opposition,” said Marcos Hernández, president of the pro-Chávez organisation Journalists for Truth. ”It says the government violates the human rights of journalists, when the truth is that there is not a single reporter in prison or persecuted for their work,” he told IPS. Hernández also said that only one newspaper, Correo del Carona, owned by David Natera in southeastern Venezuela, had to close down for a few days because of a shortage of paper, which was ”the result of its relationship with its supplier. But that strictly commercial problem was resolved and the newspaper began to publish again.” In the IAPA midyear meeting, the debate on the situation in Venezuela overshadowed not only the media owners' customary criticism of Cuba, where ”the transfer of poweràfrom Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl did not improve the status of the 25 journalists still in prison”, but also the acknowledgement of positive changes in the region. ”There were legal improvements with new laws allowing the public to gain access to official information. Nicaragua and Honduras issued regulations and Chile has approved similar initiatives. In Guatemala, a presidential decree released classified information about the military,” stated the IAPA in its conclusions. The association also welcomed developments in Ecuador and Brazil: ”Ecuador's Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the mandatory licensing of journalists. In Brazil, a Supreme Court justice declared various press law articles unconstitutional.” With respect to the political polarisation in Venezuela, Marroquín said that ”Venezuela's problems must be resolved by Venezuelans. We hope there is awareness in public opinion that freedom of speech is not something that belongs to journalists, but to the people as a whole.” ***** + SIP/IAPA (http://www.sipiapa.org) + Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias (http://www.abn.info.ve) + MEDIA-LATIN AMERICA: Easy to See the Speck in the Other's Eye - 2007 (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37957) (END/IPS/LA IP IC PF/TRASP-SW/HM/DM/08) = 04010007 ORP001 NNNN