Venezuela's Contrarian TV Station Survives on YouTube 457
carlos_J writes "Ars Technica is running a story about RCTV, a Venezuelan television station whose broadcast license was refused renewal by the government. In response, the station turned to YouTube to get its message out. Says Ars, 'El Observador clips have been seen 175,000 times since May 28, and the channel is currently the most-subscribed channel of the week. While putting the station's shows on YouTube is an excellent idea, YouTube still lacks anything near the reach of over-the-air broadcasts. But the use of the site to avoid censorship is growing, and it's not hard to imagine a day in the near future when the site (or sites like it) becomes as essential as local TV stations. As that happens, YouTube will come into even more conflicts with governments that have an interest in controlling what their citizens see, It's already happening--Thailand's king, for instance, has a thing for iPods but isn't too keen on YouTube. Will Hugo Chavez show more tolerance? '"
experiment (Score:1, Interesting)
They have the right to free speech but not using the public airwaves to distribute propaganda produced by the wealthy oil interests that runs counter to the interests of general public. Nobody is stopping them from joining private cable distribution.
The airwaves are a national resource, and belong to the people. Just like Venezuela's other natural resources.
Jails? (Score:2, Interesting)
Last I heard, he wasn't much into building jails. That seems to be more of a US thing, which has the highest prison population rate in the world [kcl.ac.uk].
And since you seem to imply Venezuela would build jails for political prisoners, would you have a few examples of such political prisoners?
Re:Will Hugo Chavez show more tolerance? (Score:3, Interesting)
I seriously wonder why they people who run that station hasn't been arrested. I mean overthrowing your government is a crime after all. Ahhh, maybe they didn't participate but rather aired stuff that wasn't favorable to the almighty himself. Well, then we are back to the he didn't renew it because they criticized him.
I find it extremely ironic that the person who called Bush evil is now Evil and is being protested by the millions in his own country. A far larger single protest turnout then any of the opposition in America could organize. Maybe Venezuela is just that much bigger then America or maybe they just pick their battles.
Other way around... (Score:3, Interesting)
The minute YouTube began actively filtering submissions (in other situations) they opened themselves to accountability for all submissions.
I have to think that user tagging/moderation would have been a better way to go... That type of system is actually the main reason I prefer this news site over most others. It allows the website to actually take a stand on many types of speech issues instead of being forced to bow down to whatever entity gets pissy with them.
Regards.
Re:Put in some perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
what you described has already happened. and no one lost their broadcast license. Even with the evil Republican winning in the end. OR maybe you are more concerned about someone like a democrat would do something like this. They have been palling around with Chaves recently. We have troups, spys and military operations were people are getting killed and run a higher risk of getting killed because the news keeps telling the enemy about the secrete operations we are conducting against them. When you have brave men and women losing their lives because of the information some news station decided was newsworthy enough to tell the enemy about, and they still have their license, I seriously don't think anything will invoke treason charges on the station.
In america, Right or wrong, we reguard the news as the ultimate political speech and it is the most protected speech out there. If the news said Bush quit to save his own life and later retracted it, nothing would have happened to them outside their creditability being shot. Seriously, the news can fuck up an entire election and not get retaliated against. What makes you think anything else would be treated differently?
what's ironic (Score:2, Interesting)
it's ironic for both countries. for the usa, it is ironic that it is american dollars via their gas guzzling suvs that fuels this vociferous critic of the usa
for venezuela, it is ironic for the same reason. there is no inherent strength in socialist economic policies. but it doesn't matter when your economy is enjoying massive inflows of foreign wealth... foreign capitalist wealth. if only castro were so lucky to be sitting on a giant fountain of oil, eh? but castro is enjoying a foreign inflow of aid himself... from chavez... who again, gets it from the usa via oil. its hilarious
without american dollars via oil revenue, there would be no chavez. chavez is just a giant gasbag demagogue. but i don't mind him. if he uses all of that oil money to actually aid the poor, rather than going to a few rich venezuelans, well then good for chavez. for doing that, he can demonify the usa all he wants. bush raped the pope, bush drinks oil from iraqi children's skulls, blah blah blah, whatever. let him hurl his invectives forever. it's just a lot of hot air, demagoguery in the service of solidfying political base via antipathy towards the usa. who cares. keep aiding the poor chavez, and you can say whatever you want about bush
i mean its not like he's using his oil revenue to fund reactionary wahabbi islamic madrassas that fuels fundamentalist islamic terrorism that revisits american shores in the form of 9/11, right?
now what country would that be? (COUGH our good "friends" the saudis COUGH)
hey america: you like your big oil guzzling suv huh?
well, via $, it brings you chavez, via $ it brings you osama bin laden, and via global warming it brings you hurricane katrina
still like your gas guzzling suv dear american suburbanite?
your paying a pretty penny for it, way above and beyond that soon to be $4/ gallon pricetag
No need to censor YouTube, Chavez can say... (Score:5, Interesting)
RCTV was the channel with the most geographical reach (nearly 100% of the country). Here in Venezuela, the "regional TV station" is a very recent phenomenon. Most of the TV stations are repeaters of national chains, and being the oldest, RCTV had the most coverage.
By replacion RCTV with a new station, Chavez acomplishes two goals, get out of the way a big nuance, and replacing that signal with on he can easily control (he is not controlling it yet, but now is quite easy).
In a country were internet penetration is low, and Broadband even lower, and where internet is mostly used by people who already opose Chavez, loosing the free/broadcast opposing medium is quite a blow for disension (I will not YET claim is a loss in freedom of expression).
Anyway, as I sit here (in Maracay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maracay [wikipedia.org]) configuring my new laptop, I receive (Radio, MSN, SMS) reports of protests all over the country... But do not be fooled, these are not riots (thanks the lord), and Chavez already survived a general 3 month strike. Therefore, in about two weeks the protests will subside, the thing will be forgoten, and the same university students who are protesting now will be watching RCTV in YouTube using the campus broadband...
Is a pitty...
Re:Jails? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Put in some perspective... (Score:0, Interesting)
No extralegal retaliation by Chávez after 2002 coup.
and:
Treatment of non-Chávez supporters questionable: some government institutions do not employ people who supported 2004 Recall Referendum.
The way this works is: For the recall referendum, there was first a collection of signatures. there were actually two, the first in 2002 and later in 2003 (reason too long to explain).
These signatures are of course a matter of public record. They were organized on a database by one of the judges overseeing the verification (the Tascon list). If your name is on that list you're inelligible for working on any public institution, oil sector (either directly or indirectly with the government owned oil companies, and they are all government owned), or any other public company. I know, I have a copy of the program. It's probably on e-mule if you want to check.It's a foxpro program, you enter your national ID number and it says whether you're a registered voter, abstentionist, and whether you "signed against the president" (and one other thing I can't recall right now).
A while ago it came up that a high-ranking official of PDVSA told everyone at the company that they had to support Chavez or be fired. Upon hearing of this, Chavez went on TV and approved of it, sayign that he should repeat again and again, that PDVSA should be "Rojo rojito" ("red, really red", his gorvernment's color).
My cousin is a chemical engineer who signed. Guess how long she's been unemployed.
There's no freedom of speech in this country. Or there is still some, but it's eroding. Political prisoners are starting to be taken, TV stations critical of the government are being closed. There are 4 public nationally-aired TV stations, 1 down, 1 governtment owned (including programs like "la hojilla", the razor-blade, which openly mocks and insults the oposition advocating violence against them every so often), 1 which is now censoring any news derogatory of the president (Venevision) and another that is being threatened to be closed down despite their license not being up for renewal anytime soon (Globovision). BTW, RCTV was the most popular of the 4. Their equipment was confiscated to establish a new government TV station (They came up with some way to twist the legal definition so as not to be unconstitutional, and the courts refuse to hear or even acknowledge the cases against it)
As a Venezuelan I find your position on this article ill-informed and insulting. But then again, this is a little dear to my heart and you probably get your information from the internet, so I'll cut you some slack.
Re:Your answer below. (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever wrong you can accuse Bush of doing, Chavez has verifiably done [umb.edu]. I should add arm-twisting of the media to that list...
Except waging an actual war — Venezuela is too weak for that... He is the curse of the country — as soon as the oil price comes back down (and it will), Venezuela will turn into Zimbabwe.