I write to inform you of specific acts and immediate threats against journalists in Venezuela, and to ask you 12 questions, as a journalist, about your organization's previous statements regarding press freedom issues in that country. I hope that your organization will take immediate action to defend these journalists at risk, and that you will offer full and honest answers to the 12 questions.
An Open Letter to Ann Cooper of
the Committee to Protect Journalists
July 29, 2002
Ms. Ann Cooper, info@cpj.org
Director
Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Avenue, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10001, USA
Phone: (212) 465-1004
FAX: (212) 465-9568
CC: CPJ "Americas Coordinators" Marylene Smeets and Sauro González
Rodríguez, americas@cpj.org, media@cpj.org
CC: Immedia Working Group, salonchingon@hotmail.com, Narco News
Subscribers,
narconews@yahoogroups.com, members of the press
Dear Ms. Cooper,
My name is Al Giordano. I have been a professional journalist since 1988
and
today I write you in my capacity as publisher of The Narco News Bulletin -
www.narconews.com -- an online newspaper that reports on the drug war and
democracy from Latin America.
It was our publication that, in December 2001, won the landmark New York
Supreme Court ruling that extended First Amendment rights under Sullivan v.
NY Times to Internet journalists. A copy of that decision can be read
online
at the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/BNM_v_Narco_News/20011205_decision.html
Today, Narco News, together with colleagues in authentic journalism and
independent media around the world, has launched an international dialogue
about the role of "press freedom" organizations. We are focusing on the
three such organizations with the largest budgets: the New York-based CPJ,
the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the Miami-based
Inter-American
Press Association.
The catalyst for this international dialogue, which we have begun on our
own
website as well as through the www.indymedia.org networks and others, was
our recent fact-finding mission to Venezuela, where we encountered a very
different set of circumstances and facts than those described by the
Committee to Protect Journalists' statements regarding events in Venezuela.
In fact, we found that an entire class of journalists in Venezuela is under
attack and has been left undefended by your organization and the other
large-budget "press freedom" organizations: the journalists of the
Community
Media, particularly those from the 25 non-profit TV and radio stations that
were legalized under Venezuela's Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 and the
Telecommunications Law of 2001.
Specifically, we bring your attention to the grave matter of the unjust
imprisonment by rogue police forces (the same ones that participated in the
April 2002 coup attempt in that country) of three important and respected
radio journalists: Nicolás Rivera of Radio Perola, and Jorge Quintero and
Lenín Méndez of Radio Senderos, who report for non-profit Community
Broadcasters in the greater Caracas area.
We also bring your attention to serious threats against these journalists
and others like them that have come not from governmental institutions,
but,
rather, from commercial media institutions.
Specifically, this threat has been executed by Miguel Angel Martínez, the
president of the private-sector Chamber of Radio Broadcasters who recently
called upon his organization's affiliates to "interfere" with the
frequencies of the Community Media outlets during the next coup d'etat
attempt in Venezuela (Mr. Martínez was a co-signer, last April 12th, with
the military-installed dictator Pedro Carmona, of the decree that abolished
the national Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution in
Venezuela.)
Today, we published Part I of a series reported from Venezuela that
contains
more details on the current situation and the threats against journalists:
http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html
This series is also published in Spanish, at:
http://www.narconews.com/medioscomunitarios1.html
It is clear to me, based on my first-hand reporting, that the entire matter
of press freedom in Venezuela turns conventional and outmoded thinking
about
"freedom of the press" on its head (much as our legal defense against
Banamex-Citigroup caused the New York Supreme Court to rethink and expand
upon existing First Amendment protections, applying them to Internet
journalists).
This international dialogue - and I hope you and others from CPJ will
participate in a spirit of full disclosure, self-criticism, self-correction
and open-mindedness - has many aspects, precisely because it is long
overdue.
For the purposes of this letter, I begin with four key matters:
A. First, there is the question, often asked in documents and statements by
the Committee to Protect Journalists: "Who is a journalist?" We find that
these Community Journalists in Venezuela certainly qualify as journalists
based on your organization's own prior declarations, but that your
organization's stated principles have not, so far, been complied with in
your actions. Thus, journalists at risk are left undefended by the very
international organizations that exist, in your own words, to protect them.
B. Second, there is the delicate matter of how CPJ will address the
worrisome trend in which commercial media corporations are increasingly
posing threats to the press freedom of independent media, community media,
non-profit media and Internet journalists. The situation in Venezuela
provides a very urgent challenge for CPJ and other organizations like it.
Because, unfortunately, the actions of your organization and others have
clearly prioritized the defense of "paid speech" (commercial journalism)
over "free speech" (community and independent journalism). As a result, I
repeat: Journalists are at grave risk today.
C. Third, there is the question of how the funding of your organization
causes, at very least, the appearance of a conflict-of-interest regarding
selective defense of commercial media journalists over non-profit media
journalists, because such a large percentage of your funding does come from
commercial media corporations or their foundations. I will address this
matter very specifically in a moment.
D. Fourth, and perhaps the most difficult matter, is the question of the
use
of speech by sectors of Civil Society who are not, per se, journalists to
criticize and counter abuses by the commercial media. Your organization has
increasingly denounced the use of speech both by citizens and their elected
leaders in Venezuela and portrayed such speech as a "threat" against press
freedom. As a journalist who has survived various and well-known attacks
against my own freedom to publish, and who has nonetheless published more
than 1,000 articles in the commercial press and more than 500 articles in
the independent media, I beg you and your organization to reconsider the
slippery slope you have entered by defining - in the case of Venezuela -
speech itself as a "threat" to speech. I, and other journalists like me,
feel very strongly that the opposite is true: that the only solution to
"bad" speech is more speech, and that your organization has made a grave
error and causes harm to your own stated mission through your increasing
attempts to inhibit free speech by a society that is increasingly harmed by
the abuses of the commercial media.
I will now elaborate on each of these four general areas of discussion, to
which I will add specific questions for you and your organization, the
Committee to Protect Journalists. As addendum, I will repeat our questions
to you, in numerical order, in the hope of obtaining clear and forthright
answers.
Obviously, some of the issues raised here may be difficult, and you may
well
disagree with the opinions expressed in Part I and future segments of our
series on the media in Venezuela, particularly as they pertain to your
organization. For that reason, I offer you the opportunity to respond on
the
pages of Narco News, and will publish your responses in full without
censorship on our pages.
I. Four Areas of Inquiry
A. Who is a Journalist?
In his introduction to "Attacks on the Press in 1997," William A. Orme, Jr.
of the Committee to Protect Journalists states, in my opinion wisely:
"We are also sometimes accused of defending people - the imprisoned, even
the dead - who are in the view of some not really journalists. This is a
critique we respectfully reject."
Mr. Orme continues:
"In every reported case of a press freedom abuse, CPJ must first determine
the people involved were journalists and the attack or prosecution was
related in some direct way to their profession. This is necessarily a
somewhat subjective process. Who is a journalist? For the purposes of our
work, we define the profession as broadly as possible. Journalists who are
sentenced to prison or targeted for assassination include renowned
newspaper
editors and struggling provincial stringers, political polemicists and
by-the-book news service reporters, star television correspondents and
shoestring community radio activists. In totalitarian societies, where by
definition there is no independent journalism, dissident pamphleteers or
pirate radio operators will be defended by CPJ if punished for what they
have written or broadcast. Journalists jailed for campaigning for freedom
of
expression also get our support: If journalists don't stand up for other
journalists who are fighting for press freedom, who will?
"We will also defend as journalists those who would not define themselves
primarily as journalists: That is because governments sometimes define
people into our profession for us by prosecuting them for what they have
published in newspapers or said on the radio…."
(Source: http://www.cpj.org/attacks97/introduction.html )
This was a wonderful statement by Mr. Orme. My first question for you is:
1. Does the 1997 statement by William Orme on behalf of the Committee to
Protect Journalists, broadly defining "who is a journalist," continue to
represent the position of CPJ?
This 1997 CPJ statement applies very clearly to "shoestring community radio
activists." In your organization's own words, the Community Media
journalists of Venezuela clearly are defined as journalists worthy of the
protection your organization says it offers.
And yet, in all of CPJ's statements regarding press freedom issues in
Venezuela, you have maintained a complete silence regarding the serious
threats - including unjust imprisonment, raids, seizures, censorship,
theats
of electronic interference by commercial broadcasters and violence and
torture - against the Community Media outlets of Venezuela. It seems to me
that in your organization's misguided obsession over the Chávez government,
you selectively defend only those journalists - and commercial journalists
at that - who are opposed to that government. Again, this situation is
admittedly different than that in many countries because what is called
"pirate" media in the United States, for example, has been legalized in
Venezuela. And it is also different than the situation in many countries
because the elected government of Venezuela has pioneered, more than any
other nation-state, the legalization and defense of Community Broadcasters.
The threats have, instead, come either from the private sector or from
pro-coup elements of rogue or opposition police agencies.
My next questions are:
2. Will CPJ, now having been reminded of its own stated definition and
mission, investigate and denounce the illegal detentions of radio
journalists Nicolás Rivera of Radio Perola, and Jorge Quintero and Lenín
Méndez of Radio Senderos?
3. Will CPJ address the root cause of these attacks: the existence of rogue
police forces and coup-plotters that enjoy a particular kind of impunity
precisely because they are supported by the commercial media corporations
of
Venezuela?
4. Will CPJ finally denounce the illegal raids and threats on April 11th,
12th and 13th 2002 by the Carmona dictatorship against Radio Perola, Radio
Catia Libre, TV Catia and Radio Fé y Alegría (broadcaster of the Catholic
Church)?
5. Will CPJ finally denounce the April coup attempt - and any future coup
attempts in Venezuela or against any democratically elected government on
earth - as a prima facie threat to press freedom?
6. Will CPJ consider a public apology to the Community Media journalists of
Venezuela, and to the public at large, for having been "asleep at the
wheel"
in not having denounced the coup d'etat as it was happening last April, and
make the internal organizational corrections to ensure that this kind of
negligence by a press-freedom organization will never happen again during a
time of crisis?
7. Of particular interest to those of us who are Internet journalists (and
of obvious personal interest to Narco News and me): Does the Committee to
Protect Journalists embrace the case law established by the New York
Supreme
Court in December 2001 in the case of Banco v. Menéndez et al, which
established, A. a higher standard upon Plaintiffs in libel lawsuits for
establishing jurisdiction on foreign journalists in U.S. courts, and; B.
the
landmark ruling that extended First Amendment protections (under Sullivan
v.
NY Times) to Internet journalists if we engage in responsible and basic
journalistic practices?
In particular, because this case was international by nature - a lawsuit
against journalists in Mexico for reports published in Mexico about events
and a Plaintiff from Mexico, but filed in U.S. courts - this case clearly
fits under the international mission of CPJ. Because CPJ has already
acknowledged that, in certain cases, Internet journalists are journalists
worthy of protection, it seems that the endorsement and defense of this
court victory (which was not appealed and is now final) would naturally be
embraced by CPJ. Still, an affirmative statement to that end would be
helpful to the protection of all Internet journalists throughout the world.
B. "Paid Speech" vs. "Free Speech"
These are difficult times for the profession of journalism and for
journalists, because, increasingly, the threats to our safety and free
speech are coming from within the industry itself: from the corporate
owners
of TV, radio, print and commercial Internet news organizations.
Again, the attempted coup in Venezuela last April was a watershed moment
that revealed this problem, now of epidemic proportions, to the global
public.
The landscape of journalism itself has changed radically in recent years,
with the wave of mergers and acquisitions and the increased concentration
of
media ownership in the hands of fewer and fewer companies. Many, if not
most, of these companies are no longer exclusively dedicated to news
gathering and reporting. The conflicts-of-interest by news organizations
with the extracurricular financial interests of their own owners thus pile
up like traffic at rush hour. Commercial journalism has lost its ethical
and
societal compass and strayed very far from the role envisioned and
protected
by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and similar laws
in
other lands. When it comes to threats to press freedom, the media has met
the enemy and, to quote Pogo, "it is us."
This radical change in the news gathering environment - a change from above
and from within the media industry - forces, in my opinion, any
organization
dedicated to the protection of journalists and press-freedom to reassess
and
correct its activities bringing them up to date with the times and the
actual situation. Obviously, this is a cause for soul-searching by all of
us
who are journalists or who wish to be authentic journalists, and for the
organizations that defend our rights. And yet the change in reality is so
sudden and extreme that we must rethink almost all of our past assumptions.
I have outlined a very large process that will take time and deliberation,
I
am sure, if it is addressed at all. But specifically regarding the crisis
of
journalism within the commercial media of Venezuela - and because Community
Journalists are at risk right now - this matter can and should be addressed
immediately by CPJ.
Obviously, CPJ must respond to a large volume of cases and at times this
work is akin to being in a MASH unit: you must practice a kind of triage
and
prioritize which cases are most important to publicize and advocate.
However, it is also obvious that the attempted coup d'etat in Venezuela,
which threatened to turn back the clocks of democracy and press-freedom
thirty years in the entire hemisphere, is a matter that should take
priority
over all other threats against press freedom. If that coup d'etat had
succeeded, your job would have become a hundred times more difficult not
only in Venezuela, but in your role of protecting journalists throughout
Latin America (just as the 1973 coup in Chile caused a chain reaction of
repression and attacks against the press throughout South America with
Operation Condor spreading the terror to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay,
Bolivia, Perú, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela throughout the
1970s, 80s and 90s).
Specifically, regarding the ongoing present-day situation in Venezuela,
there is no reason or justification to wait: Action is needed now,
immediately, to address and correct root causes of threats to press freedom
and against journalists. And to do this task effectively, CPJ and other
organizations like it must correct errors already made.
My next set of questions is:
8. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the censorship by all of the
commercial
television stations in Venezuela on April 12th and 13th 2002 against their
own journalists, that - nobody today disputes that there was a news
blackout
- prevented their own journalists from reporting the facts about the
counter-coup by Civil Society against the military-installed dictatorship
of
those days?
9. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the threats by Miguel Angel Martínez
of
the Chamber of Radio Broadcasters to "interfere" with the frequencies of
Community radio and TV broadcasters utilizing the technology and equipment
of the commercial broadcasters affiliated with his organization?
10. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the forced closure of Channel 8 - the
public television network in Venezuela - by the Carmona dictatorship in
April 2002 and the complete silence by the commercial media about this
threat upon a public media outlet?
11. What is CPJ's position on the participation by commercial news
gathering
organizations such as the daily El Nacional and the daily La Hora in
Venezuela in censoring their own pages last April 9th in order to join a
politically-partisan "national strike" that - it is clear to everyone, in
retrospect - had the goal of provoking the April 11th coup d'etat?
I will address some of the issues regarding Question # 11 in a moment, when
we discuss, below, whether public speech is, in reality, a threat to public
speech, as CPJ has repeatedly claimed regarding Venezuela.
But first, I ask you to forthrightly address questions about CPJ's
financing
and whether it causes either conflicts-of-interest or appearance of
conflicts.
C. Following the Money at CPJ
Up front, I wish to praise the Committee to Protect Journalist for
disclosing, in a detailed manner, the sources of your organization's
funding. We do the same at Narco News, on our website as you do, so that
the
public may be informed. I congratulate you for that particularly because
you
do it in a more comprehensive manner than the other two large international
press freedom organizations that we have invited into this international
dialogue; Reporters Without Borders and the Inter-American Press
Association.
The late Judith Moses, a CPJ board member and tireless advocate of press
freedom, told me in the year 2000 that there are times when funding comes
with strings attached to the Committee for Protection of Journalists. For
example, explained Judith, the Ford Foundation - one of your major
financiers that also finances the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the
Press in the United States - insists on certain divisions of labor between
the two organizations regarding domestic vs. foreign threats on press
freedom. There is certainly nothing wrong with donors specifying the nature
of their contributions as long as such instructions are fully disclosed to
the public. But I think you should fully disclose that arrangement and any
others like it.
My next questions are:
12. Given that so much of CPJ's funding comes from commercial news
organizations, profit-making corporations or their non-profit foundations,
how does CPJ guard against allowing the reality of funding sources to
determine a more vigorous defense of "paid speech" by commercial
journalists
over the press freedoms that truly involve "free speech" by non-profit,
community, independent, shoestring or low-budget Internet publications?
13. What safeguards, if any, has CPJ put in place to assure that media
companies that donate to CPJ do not get favorable treatment over
journalists
who either don't contribute to your organization or who, because they are
not wealthy, have not been able to contribute to your work?
14. Specifically regarding the situation in Venezuela: One of your
contributors is the Cisneros Group of Venezuela, owners of Venevision TV,
one of the companies that censored its own journalists in April 2002 from
reporting on the counter-coup underway in that country. Have the Cisneros
Group's contributions prevented CPJ or made you reluctant to criticize the
threats against press freedom caused by the Cisneros Group's own actions
during the crisis of last April?
In a few cases, and to your credit, at least in other countries, CPJ has
defended Community Radio journalists, and even sometimes those working in
Pirate Radio (on eight occasions over the past seven years). But the vast
majority of attacks against non-commercial journalists have not been
addressed by CPJ: regarding the systematic attacks by pro-coup forces in
Venezuela, CPJ has remained completely silent on these kinds of attacks.
15. Does your more aggressive and active defense of commercial journalists
than of non-profit journalists reflect the realities of fundraising in this
era?
It comes down to this for CPJ: Do you represent journalists or the industry
that funds you? Because the protection of journalists means, also,
protection from the media industry and, often, its business agendas that
corrupt its sense of fairness and practice of journalism.
For example, since 1999, beginning with the World Trade Organization
protests in Seattle and continuing regularly during similar
anti-globalization protests throughout the world - in Davos, Genoa, Cancún
and other cities - there has been a systematic series of violent attacks
and
jailings of journalists, photojournalists and video-journalists who have
covered those demonstrations. These attacks have been extensively
documented, photographed and filmed and published on the more than 90
Internet sites of www.indymedia.org throughout the world. But the Committee
to Protect Journalists, despite the systematic and repeat nature of these
attacks on journalists, has been, to my knowledge, silent in the defense of
these journalists.
There is a polemic among some commercial journalists who say that these
independent journalists are not real journalists. However, I remind you of
your organization's 1997 statements by William Orme, quoted above, that
declare, unequivocally, that this kind of journalism also deserves your
active protection.
I urge you to address this issue with total seriousness: These attacks
against Indymedia journalists are systematic and have enjoyed a savage
impunity, in part, because authorities know that the major international
press freedom organizations like CPJ have not spoken loudly or clearly
against them. These attacks will likely continue during every
anti-globalization protest to come until the press-freedom organizations
end
your silence on them.
One of the root causes of these attacks has to do with a conflict within
journalism. Typically, during the global meetings of the World Trade
Organization and similar groups, a caste system of credentialing
journalists
has resulted: Journalists for commercial news organizations are accredited
and may practice their work with the usual assumptions of safety and
protection. But independent media journalists are not accredited by these
organizations and governments, and thus are left in the streets with the
demonstrators, often beaten or jailed precisely because they are present
with cameras or tape-recorders or pen-and-paper. They are specifically
singled out for violent beatings and imprisonment because they are
journalists.
The commercial news organizations, by and large, are in favor of this
State-enforced "caste system" among journalists for obvious and interested
motives: The credentialing only of commercial journalists at such global
news events gives commercial news organizations a competitive advantage,
indeed, a monopoly, on coverage of the deliberations inside these
gatherings
where governments and industry meet, often deciding questions of great
public importance.
Thus, the very act of refusing to credential non-profit, community,
independent or Internet journalists causes danger and harm to many of us,
as
has been documented time and time again during each of these events.
My questions regarding this matter are:
16. Has CPJ's financing from commercial media organizations caused your
staff to ignore these systematic and violent attacks on independent
journalists during these world trade meetings across the globe?
17. Should CPJ address and denounce the exclusion of non-profit,
independent, community and Internet journalists from press credentials by
governments and trade organizations as threats upon press freedom?
I remind that the single-greatest determinative factor in whether a
journalist covering one of these world trade gatherings is beaten, jailed
or
harmed is whether the journalist has been denied credentials to cover the
event on the inside. The question of credentialing of journalists, thus, is
a serious matter of the safety of journalists: Those left outside in the
streets to cover the event are placed at risk and in harm's way.
A related question:
18. Will CPJ, now that this matter has been brought to your attention,
assign its staff to monitor and investigate these predictable attacks
during
future world trade meetings and anti-globalization protests?
This can be easily begun with the simple commitment to monitor reports on
www.indymedia.org and similar websites as these events are happening. The
archives of these sites, in fact, contain the documentary evidence,
including photographs, videotapes, audiotapes, and eyewitness testimony, of
the systematic attacks that have already occurred.
I include this matter in this section on CPJ's financing because, at very
least, the perception of a conflict-of-interest exists: your commercial
media and corporate donors favor the exclusion of independent journalists
from being credentialed to cover these important events. They are generally
silent about these attacks, or, on many occasions, have offered biased
reporting that seems to justify these attacks on their colleagues in
journalism.
I would suggest that this reality makes it even more important that a
press-freedom organization like CPJ undertake the task that the commercial
media refuses to do: The documentation, accurate reporting and public
advocacy against these attacks and the selective credentialing process that
is at their root. On the most basic level, these are attacks against
journalism itself, not just journalists, and even if the commercial news
organizations do not have the wisdom or day-to-day moral compass to defend
their independent colleagues, an organization named the Committee to
Protect
Journalists ought to fill the vacuum and undertake a vigorous defense of
these journalists at risk. I urge and beg you to do just that.
D. Venezuela and Speech
Critical of the Media
In February 2001, CPJ published a major report titled "Radio Chávez," which
appears online at:
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2001/Ven_feb01/Ven_feb01.html
The report states:
"Chávez relies on direct access to his supporters, allowing him to
marginalize all other institutions, including the press. He has maintained
a
consistently antagonistic attitude toward the media. His diatribes have to
some extent undermined the credibility of the press, making local
journalists vulnerable to legal and even physical attacks."
There are so many errant, and hypocritical statements for a "free speech"
organization to have made in this report that it is difficult for me to
know
where to begin. I stress that I make these comments as a journalist and
this
matter is at the root of why, today, Narco News and our networks of
authentic journalists and independent media have launched an international
dialogue about the role of "press freedom" organizations.
I must honestly tell you, and it pains me to say it, but I feel that the
Committee to Protect Journalists has betrayed its self-proclaimed mission
with this kind of discourse against free speech.
What you at CPJ are denouncing here is speech itself: and I, for one, don't
believe I am at all alone in wondering how a press-freedom organization
could engage in such an Orwellian discourse, so harmful to the bedrock
principles of free speech and press freedom.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes no distinctions: Free
speech rights belong to all. It does not "license" some citizens to enjoy
these rights above others.
Likewise, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
"Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall
include freedom to seek receive and impart information and ideas of all
kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in
the form of art, or through any other media of his choice."
It does not say "some people" shall have the right to freedom of
expression.
It does not say "everyone except for elected leaders." It says, plain and
simple, that "everyone" enjoys these rights.
And yet the implication in your organization's snidely-penned and shallow
discourse about the use of speech by Chávez is that the elected president
of
a nation should not utilize his rights to speak if those rights include
criticizing a commercial media that - as the events of April 2002 proved
beyond a reasonable doubt - has worked not as a participant in democracy
but
has, overwhelmingly and to the point of supporting a coup d'etat, become,
as
an industry, the single-largest threat to free speech by the people - the
"everyone" that is cited in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - of
our era.
And by its active role in the deterioration of the free speech rights of
all
the people, the commercial media has merely manufactured a boomerang upon
its own rights: I should not have lecture experts in "press freedom" about
this dynamic - your organization has, in words, said the same thing many
times, but in deeds has not complied with your self-stated mission.
The commercial media, not just in Venezuela, but especially in Venezuela,
has denied voice to the majority of citizens, particularly the poor
majority, and thus frozen them out of the public discourse. Instead, it has
reserved access to the airwaves only for the wealthiest sectors - in Latin
America, these sectors are accurately known as the oligarchy - but
nonetheless the public found a superior medium through which to speak: fair
and free elections.
I need not remind your organization that prior to the 1998 landslide
election of Chávez as president of Venezuela, and the five subsequent
elections in which, in each vote, the public backed his programs and allies
overwhelmingly, that Venezuela, under its old regimes, was a more dangerous
country for journalists than it is today by every measure.
According to the 1991-1992 annual report of PROVEA, Venezuela's leading
human rights group, in that year there were 125 distinct attacks upon
individual journalists in that country: physical beatings, interference,
threats, legal persecution, raids, seizures, imprisonment, and firings of
journalists specifically related to their work as journalists. In that
year,
the front pages of the nation's newspapers would regularly have entire
sections blocked out and marked "CENSURADO," censored, because governmental
authorities ordered that specific stories not be published.
Before the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999, which guarantees press freedom
in that country to a degree that never existed prior, there were laws on
the
books that expressly forbade freedom of the press: the 1940
Telecommunications Act allowing for prior censorship, by the government, of
every media; harsh penalties for any reporter who did not reveal his
confidential sources to the government; a code of military and government
secrecy; later came the 1994 law requiring that any citizen, to legally
practice journalism, must have a college degree (which, in a poor country
with a terrible education system was akin to a ban on press freedom by the
majority of its citizens). There was a law on "state secrets" that stated
"national administrative public records are, by their nature, reserved for
official use."
Today, as a direct result of the choices, democratically made, by the
majority of Venezuela's citizens, there is more press freedom than has ever
existed in Venezuela. But your organization's ideological blinders have
prevented you from acknowledging the fast progress and good work that has
been accomplished. Until last month, when the pro-coup forces unjustly
arrested journalist Nicolás Rivera, not a single journalist was in prison
in
Venezuela under the Chávez government.
Let me, please, analyze some of your organization's most inaccurate and
outrageous statements from that February 2001 report. CPJ wrote:
"Chávez relies on direct access to his supporters, allowing him to
marginalize all other institutions, including the press."
Please explain, as part of this international dialogue on the role of
"press
freedom" organizations, how "relying on direct access to his supporters"
thus "allows" Chávez "to marginalize all other institutions, including the
press"?
Chávez is hardly the only elected leader who speaks directly to the public
via the airwaves. You would be hard pressed to find any leader - from
George
W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him to Vicente Fox and his weekly radio
show
in Mexico - who do not avail themselves of that same "direct access."
The flip side of that coin - ignored by CPJ in this hypocritical document -
is the right of the public to have "direct access" to its elected leaders.
In fact, this entire "Radio Chávez" report smacks of an elitism and
hostility toward the public and its free speech and other democratic
rights.
CPJ writes that Chávez has:
"…maintained a consistently antagonistic attitude toward the media. His
diatribes have to some extent undermined the credibility of the press,
making local journalists vulnerable to legal and even physical attacks."
This is as if to say that the public has no legitimate grievances with a
corrupted and interested commercial media that has denied it voice in a
systematic and serial manner for years, dating well before Chávez was
elected president. The public, in the fantasy world of this CPJ document
and
others like it, is portrayed as consisting of mere sheep who blindly follow
their elected leader.
I am a journalist who has spoken, face to face, with hundreds of members of
the public on all sides of the political disputes in Venezuela -
specifically to investigate issues of press freedom, the behavior of the
media (commercial and community journalists alike) and public attitudes
about the press - and I tell you: CPJ is so inaccurate and wrong on this
matter that it has undermined its own credibility as a defender of press
freedom.
The "undermining" of the "credibility of the press" in Venezuela has one
author and one author only: The commercial press has undermined its own
credibility. As a class, the commercial media in Venezuela, and
particularly
in the capital city of Caracas, is the shoddiest, most unprofessional, most
inaccurate, most anti-pluralistic, and most un-credible regional media in
the entire hemisphere, perhaps save that in Paraguay. To blame that on
Chávez, as CPJ has done, is insulting to the Venezuelan public. It reverses
the process of which came first: Undermined press credibility or Chávez?
CPJ
states that Chávez is the cause of undermined press credibility. Today I
inform you that he is not the cause, but, rather, the result of it. And
when
he criticizes the corrupt behavior of the media in that country, he truly
represents the views of a majority of the public that elected him, in part,
to be a bulwark against the abuses by the commercial media.
The portrayal of the public as led around by the nose by its elected leader
is elitist and hostile to democratic values, and as a journalist and as a
citizen I expect more from an organization that claims to protect
journalists and press freedom. At very least, I - and others like me -
expect a considered exploration of both sides of the Venezuela story, and
not the one-sided fictional account that CPJ has now offered for four
years.
When, in this document, your organization quotes Sergio Dahbar, associate
editor at El Nacional, as saying, "This government doesn't know how to
handle ... the possibility that many ideas can coexist in a society" - and
then you lift out his quote as if you are saying it yourselves in the
visual
presentation of this document - you are quoting, in fact, an official of a
newspaper that is more guilty of that accusation than the government it
accuses.
I would urge you, strongly, for example to interview El Nacional reporter
Vanessa Davies - a nationally respected, award winning, champion of
investigative journalism in Venezuela - as I have done. Ms. Davies - as
well
as the representatives of the union at El Nacional - can explain to CPJ
precisely how it is the censorious management of El Nacional that "doesn't
know how to handle… the possibility that many ideas can coexist in a
society." Ms. Davies has been censored from writing about political matters
at that paper, as have others. I would urge you read, as I do, daily El
Nacional's website: there is only one set of ideas allowed in that
newspaper, and a constant campaign of disinformation against any other set
of ideas. It is one of the worst, most inaccurate and knowingly dishonest
newspapers in all América. And if your staff at all took the time to read
that newspaper, its published reporters and columnists, it would reach the
same conclusion.
So many of CPJ's statements and fears expressed about the Chávez government
in Venezuela are in the realm of the hypothetical, like this one:
"Is Chávez a new and improved Latin American populist, out to transform
Venezuela's corrupt political culture for the people's sake? Or is he an
aspiring Latin American strongman who will turn repressive when his
popularity starts to wane?"
This discourse is almost verbatim lifted from the propaganda of the United
States government and the Otto Reich regime in the State Department
regarding Venezuela, and it reveals a partiality, bias and myopia that is
unbecoming of a serious "press freedom" organization.
I remind you that all the hypothetical fears you have expressed over four
years regarding Venezuela have not come true, in terms of the actions of
the
elected government there. To the contrary, the forces that have "turned
repressive" are the factions that your organization has consistently
championed: the corrupted commercial media - including El Nacional and your
financier The Cisneros Group - who have forced a censorship on their own
reporters as part of their support for a bloody coup d'etat that abolished
Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and launched - as Part I
of our series reported from Venezuela documents - a systematic and violent
campaign of attacks against the independent Community Media of Venezuela.
Impunity is a word that all of us who seek to defend press freedom must
report on. I beg of you and your staff at the Committee to Protect
Journalists to consider - and correct - the impunity that you have provided
to the true usurpers of press freedom in Venezuela by your willful
abandonment of the real journalists at risk in the Community Media of that
country, and your unquestioning endorsement of the statements of interested
and corrupted members of the commercial media who, during those three days
in April 2002, demonstrated their hostility to the democratic and
free-speech principles that your organization has attributed to them.
Your organization, in its drumbeat of inaccurate statements about
Venezuela,
and in the way you have shirked your role as defender of the truly
threatened, and now imprisoned, journalists there, has done a great
disservice to the very cause you claim to champion.
Unfortunately, if the rank-and-file public and its elected leaders of
Venezuela or other countries told you this, you would probably accuse them
of threatening your freedom of speech, as you have disingenuously and
repeatedly claimed when the public has fought bad speech with more speech.
However, I remind you, this critique comes from a journalist, one who has
had to defend, more than most (and less than some, thankfully), his own
press freedom, who has won important legal rights for all journalists as a
result, and who reflects the views of a great many authentic journalists
and
community media workers. We are now going to have this discussion within
our
profession: Journalists to journalists and speaking, in open public view,
to
the organizations that claim to protect us. It is not only our right, but
our duty, to clean up our own profession, and to do it using the very
weapon
that we hold sacred: Speech.
Welcome to the dialogue. I hope you will enter it and answer each of the 18
questions above in a spirit of full disclosure, self-criticism and
self-correction.
Your organization, in its behavior regarding Venezuela and its abandonment
of persecuted journalists who don't agree with your inaccurate and
interested assessment of what has occurred there, has done great harm to
the
very principles you are organized to defend.
It is time for you, Ms. Cooper, as an individual, and for every member of
your staff and board of directors to do some soul-searching about your
role.
As a journalist, I ask: Do you exist to protect us or not?
You could start by protecting Nicolás Rivera and the Community Media
journalists of Venezuela, in accordance with your own stated mission and
rules, and by answering my 18 questions for you, which I will repeat, as
addendum, below, for your convenience.
As your own William Orme stated in the introduction to your 1997 report:
"We have learned that international pressure, from journalists on behalf of
their fellow journalists, can be highly effective."
And:
"If journalists don't stand up for other journalists who are fighting for
press freedom, who will?"
And that is why I have written you this letter and 18 questions that, I
hope
you will agree, deserve thorough and self-critical answers.
Sincerely,
Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@hotmail.com
18 Questions for the
Committee to Protect Journalists:
1. Does the 1997 statement by William Orme on behalf of the Committee to
Protect Journalists, broadly defining "who is a journalist," continue to
represent the position of CPJ?
2. Will CPJ, now having been reminded of its own stated definition and
mission, investigate and denounce the illegal detentions of radio
journalists Nicolás Rivera of Radio Perola, and Jorge Quintero and Lenín
Méndez of Radio Senderos?
3. Will CPJ address the root cause of these attacks: the existence of rogue
police forces and coup-plotters that enjoy a particular kind of impunity
precisely because they are supported by the commercial media corporations
of
Venezuela?
4. Will CPJ finally denounce the illegal raids and threats on April 11th,
12th and 13th 2002 by the Carmona dictatorship against Radio Perola, Radio
Catia Libre, TV Catia and Radio Fé y Alegría (broadcaster of the Catholic
Church)?
5. Will CPJ finally denounce the April coup attempt - and any future coup
attempts in Venezuela or against any democratically elected government on
earth - as a prima facie threat to press freedom?
6. Will CPJ consider a public apology to the Community Media journalists of
Venezuela, and to the public at large, for having been "asleep at the
wheel"
in not having denounced the coup d'etat as it was happening last April, and
make the internal organizational corrections to ensure that this kind of
negligence by a press-freedom organization will never happen again during a
time of crisis?
7. Of particular interest to those of us who are Internet journalists (and
of obvious personal interest to Narco News and me): Does the Committee to
Protect Journalists embrace the case law established by the New York
Supreme
Court in December 2001 in the case of Banco v. Menéndez et al, which
established, A. a higher standard upon Plaintiffs in libel lawsuits for
establishing jurisdiction on foreign journalists in U.S. courts, and; B.
the
landmark ruling that extended First Amendment protections (under Sullivan
v.
NY Times) to Internet journalists if we engage in responsible and basic
journalistic practices?
8. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the censorship by all of the
commercial
television stations in Venezuela on April 12th and 13th 2002 against their
own journalists, that - nobody today disputes that there was a news
blackout
- prevented their own journalists from reporting the facts about the
counter-coup by Civil Society against the military-installed dictatorship
of
those days?
9. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the threats by Miguel Angel Martínez
of
the Chamber of Radio Broadcasters to "interfere" with the frequencies of
Community radio and TV broadcasters utilizing the technology and equipment
of the commercial broadcasters affiliated with his organization?
10. Will CPJ investigate and denounce the forced closure of Channel 8 - the
public television network in Venezuela - by the Carmona dictatorship in
April 2002 and the complete silence by the commercial media about this
threat upon a public media outlet?
11. What is CPJ's position on the participation by commercial news
gathering
organizations such as the daily El Nacional and the daily La Hora in
Venezuela in censoring their own pages last April 9th in order to join a
politically-partisan "national strike" that - it is clear to everyone, in
retrospect - had the goal of provoking the April 11th coup d'etat?
12. Given that so much of CPJ's funding comes from commercial news
organizations, profit-making corporations or their non-profit foundations,
how does CPJ guard against allowing the reality of funding sources to
determine a more vigorous defense of "paid speech" by commercial
journalists
over the press freedoms that truly involve "free speech" by non-profit,
community, independent, shoestring or low-budget Internet publications?
13. What safeguards, if any, has CPJ put in place to assure that media
companies that donate to CPJ do not get favorable treatment over
journalists
who either don't contribute to your organization or who, because they are
not wealthy, have not been able to contribute to your work?
14. Specifically regarding the situation in Venezuela: One of your
contributors is the Cisneros Group of Venezuela, owners of Globovision TV,
one of the companies that censored its own journalists in April 2002 from
reporting on the counter-coup underway in that country. Have the Cisneros
Group's contributions prevented CPJ or made you reluctant to criticize the
threats against press freedom caused by the Cisneros Group's own actions
during the crisis of last April?
15. Does your more aggressive and active defense of commercial journalists
than of non-profit journalists reflect the realities of fundraising in this
era?
16. Has CPJ's financing from commercial media organizations caused your
staff to ignore these systematic and violent attacks on independent
journalists during these world trade meetings across the globe?
17. Should CPJ address and denounce the exclusion of non-profit,
independent, community and Internet journalists from press credentials by
governments and trade organizations as threats upon press freedom?
18. Will CPJ, now that this matter has been brought to your attention,
assign its staff to monitor and investigate these predictable attacks
during
future world trade meetings and anti-globalization protests?
Read Part I of This Series:
http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html
Lea Ud. Parte I en Español:
http://www.narconews.com/medioscomunitarios1.html
Read Our Letter to Reporters Without Borders:
http://www.narconews.com/letterwithoutborders1.html
Read Our Letter to the Interamerican Press Association
http://www.narconews.com/iapaletter1.html
For More Narco News:
http://www.narconews.com/
"If Journalists Don't Stand Up for
Journalists, Who Will?
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