US government funds color press group’s objectivity on Venezuela

[struggle4progress]

The Guild Reporter Diana Barahona writes: Over the past year, US news stories about press freedom increasingly have cited the work of a Paris-based organization, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, or RSF). <snip>

But RSF, unlike the CPJ, is heavily funded by government grants, raising questions about its objectivity. And a closer examination of the battles RSF wages -- and those it ignores -- strongly suggests a political agenda colored by its choice of patrons. <snip>

Most notable, perhaps, is the group’s obvious political bias in its reporting on Haiti. RSF expressed its support for the Feb. 29, 2004, Franco-American overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the same time that it received 11% of its budget from the French government (€397,604, or approximately $465,200 in 2003). According to Haiti-based journalist and documentary film-maker Kevin Pina, the organization selectively documented attacks on opposition radio stations while ignoring other attacks on journalists and broadcasters to create the impression of state-sponsored violence against Aristide’s opponents.

RSF blamed Aristide for the unsolved murders of two journalists, calling him a “predator of press freedom,” then celebrated his departure in a July 2004 article headlined, “Press freedom returns: a gain to be nurtured.” “A new wind of freedom is blowing for the capital’s radio stations,” it proclaimed, adding that Aristide -- who had no army -- was planning a “scorched-earth ending” to the crisis that began when 300 paramilitaries armed with M-16s invaded from the Dominican Republic. <snip>

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=27947

[Judi Lynn]

1. So Bush has put Reporters Without Frontiers on our payroll, as well

How droll.

Unfortunately, the organization appears unwilling to address such concerns: RSF’s New York representative, Tala Dowlatshahi, terminated a telephone interview when asked if the organization had applied last year for any US government grants other than one received from the National Endowment for Democracy.
(snip)

Human rights lawyer Eva Golinger has documented more than US$20 million given by the NED and USAID to opposition groups and private media in Venezuela, many of them headed by coup participants. The NED granted RSF nearly $40,000 in January. Although the rights group has criticized Chávez since the time of the 2002 coup -- well before the grant -- its application for money from a US government agency that has been targeting the Venezuelan president for regime change raises questions about RSF’s independence, as well as its willingness to criticize its benefactors.

That brings us to Iraq and RSF’s 2004 report on the invasion and its aftermath, which is rambling and contradictory. It reports, for example, that the overthrow of Hussein “opened a new era of freedom . . . for Iraqi journalists;” meanwhile, the International News Safety Institute reports that 44 Iraqi journalists and support staff have died covering the conflict since it began two years ago. Similarly, the RSF asserts that the bombing of the Ministry of Information—a war crime under the Geneva Conventions -- “ decades of zero press freedom.” That sunny assessment is followed by 11 pages detailing journalists killed, wounded, missing and imprisoned.
(snip)

For people who've been wondering what on earth is wrong with R.S.F., NOW YOU KNOW! They work for _Bush.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks to struggle4progress. I've been puzzled, confused, and angry about these guys for a long time. They seemed so odd, so inconsistant. This puts everything in a whole new life.

[struggle4progress]

2. This story cleared up a lot for me, JL. I'll never quote them again.

[Judi Lynn]

3. You may feel this view of them reinforced by another odd situation...

Two Venezuelan Mayors
Press Freedom, Soft Drinks, and Democracy in the Andes

......... by Justin Podur August 03, 2003

A recent Human Rights Watch report, which was harshly criticized by supporters of Venezuela's 'Bolivarian Revolution', said that "there are few obvious limits on free expression in Venezuela. The country's print and audiovisual media operate without restrictions." Two months after the report was published, on July 14, one of the country's audiovisual media outlets came up against a rather serious restriction-it was shut down and its equipment confiscated. The outlet in question is called CatiaTV, but it was not shut down by the Chavez government but by the mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Pena, who is an opponent of Chavez.

CatiaTV was an experiment in genuine community television. It was started by a group of people in Catia, a vast and extremely poor borough of Caracas, who thought to film one of the community's events to show it to the community. It gave poor people the opportunity to make their own programs, about themselves, for themselves. In April 2002, when the coup against the Chavez government took place, workers in CatiaTV were instrumental in helping to get the state television channel, Channel 8, back online, breaking the monopoly of misinformation of the private television networks and facilitating the reversal of the coup.

Reporters Without Borders (which did protest against the closing of CatiaTV), demonstrating a disappointing lack of understanding of the Venezuelan media situation, said that reporters there were "caught between an authoritarian president and an intolerant media." The private networks are advocates of a coup, call supporters of Chavez 'monkeys', and distort information to a remarkable degree. But the people can't rely solely on the state media. This is exactly what makes community media like CatiaTV so important. It is also why Alfredo Pena shut it down.

Who is Alfredo Pena? The mayor of Greater Caracas was a supporter of Chavez and had been a journalist himself (his email, should you want to write him and tell him to give CatiaTV their transmitter back, is [e-mail]). But his more recent fame has come from his use of the Policia Metropolitana in Caracas. There is evidence that Pena's police were instrumental in the coup, murdering Chavistas on April 11 2002 in actions that were blamed on the government and used to justify the coup.....
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=3993

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don't know about you, but I think this is really a sorry level of "professionalism" for these people. We tend to trust so many sources we read implicitly.

Contemporary events seem to conspire to accomodate some real right-wing sharks posturing as innocent victems very convincingly, without a closer look. The Venezuelan "media" aping actual people of integrity is so ugly.

This condemns HRW, as well. They missed the boat on this one, for sure.

[Selatius]

4. We desperately need community owned television stations in the US

The current situation with media consolidation is simply not sustainable democracy wise.

[struggle4progress]

6. I'm unlikely to attack genuinely independent human rights NGOs ...

... even if they do not support my political views, insofar as I regard it as their task to take a principled stand based on the actual facts. I've followed HRW on-and-off since their Watch Committee days

I think this is the HRW report Z Magazine references:

... There are few obvious limits on free expression in Venezuela. The country's print and audiovisual media operate without restrictions. Most are strongly opposed to President Chávez and express their criticism in unequivocal and often strident terms. No journalists are in prison for exercising their profession, and there have been few criminal prosecutions or successful civil suits against journalists in recent years.

Nevertheless, journalists in Venezuela today face constant physical risks. Human Rights Watch estimates that there were at least 130 assaults and threats of physical harm to journalists and press property between the beginning of 2002 and February 2003, and the assaults continue. It is not the government, the police or the armed forces that commit these acts of aggression, however, but civilians who strongly identify with the president and his proclaimed revolutionary program.

It is evident, even from street graffiti in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, that a significant segment of the population is angered by the press. Many feel that the media have failed to do their essential job of providing the public with accurate and unbiased information. Both members of the government, and their civilian supporters who mount angry vigils outside the television studios, share this view. Many journalists interviewed by Human Rights Watch themselves had deep misgivings about the political role the press is currently playing in Venezuela ...

http://hrw.org/reports/2003/venezuela/venez0503.htm

I consider this sort of NGO work balanced and credible. It is true that this report was critical of Chavez. But of course the human rights NGOs have traditionally aimed their criticisms at governments.

Cheers.

[Vladimir]

5. As I like to do in these situations

I would remind people about the following thread on the NED:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1256111

Any group accepting funding from these goons is effectively a CIA mouthpiece.