Venezuela's Media Minister Andres Izarra
The excesses of Venezuela's right wing corporate media make ours seem quaint. In Venezuela, the media has long been "Murdoched" - acquired by wealthy, corporations that pander to mass market tastes with steamy sex, bloody violence and selective Jeff Gannon-style news coverage.
Today, the Venezuelan government is fighting back by decentralizing media influence. No, they're not nationalizing the media. They are fostering more competition with a unique "media incubator" program that puts broadcast equipment in the hands of small, independent community and alternative resources.
Venezuela's
U.S.-backed "coup" three years ago failed when more than a million Venezuelan people poured into the streets and demanded their president back.
Corporate media complicity in the coup was detailed in a fascinating Irish documentary released last year in the U.S. as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
The antics of Venezuela's President Chavez have made him a hero to many liberals (I am one) and a capitalist pariah in the U.S. There's substantial evidence that U.S. polling companies fabricated results during the Venezuelan "recall" election last year that Chavez nevertheless won handily.
The thug tactics we witnessed during the 2000 and 2004 elections in the U.S. were pioneered in Venezuela - minority voter intimidation, registration challenges, dead people voting and selective media coverage that bordered on promotion - thanks to the cooperation of corporate media. According to the docu, "corporate media" included every Venezuelan TV broadcaster except a single public channel.
Today, Chavez' government is giving away small-watt broadcast equipment to independent broadcasters. (And the guy who's coordinating it all, Media Minister Andres Izarra, reminds me of Barak Obama).
Would an "independent broadcaster" initiative work in the U.S.? Does the Internet fulfill that function better? Is that why the mainstream media is scared it's collapsing?
Joe Trippi's book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, has nothing to do with the documentary on Chavez. But in it, Trippi wrote something that does explain the here and now of mass media in the U.S.:
Every institution that doesn't understand that the technology is finally here to allow people to reject what they're being given and demand what they want had better start paying attention.
The revolution comes for you next.