Tonight, Frontline airs on PBS stations nationwide, a program titled "The Hugo Chavez Show". You can watch it, as I did, on line at PBS's website. My comments here are mostly about the general tone of this Frontline program, during which I often felt a dissonance between what I was watching and the narration describing it.
"The Hugo Chavez Show" centers it's coverage around Chavez's own weekly Sunday television program, "Al'o Presidente!", which he uses to communicate his feelings, thoughts, hopes, and agenda to anyone who cares to watch. "Alo' Presidente!" is often and unpredictably long in time and wide in scope.
The tone of this Frontline program is set early.
After describing how Chavez often takes unpredictable tangents during his show, illustrated by when, during a tirade about a cross-border military incident involving Colombian President Uribe, he called for 10 battalions of Venezuela's military to move into position along the border with Colombia, Frontline calls this posturing action "the war he declared on Colombia". Certainly, the United States has been in far more "wars" than we ever imagined if wars were so constituted.
Government ministers, who are required to participate in the Presidente broadcasts and are often publicly criticized and admonished by Chavez on live television are described by Frontline as having been "devastated" by the exposure. Anyone who has seen one of Britain's Prime Minister question periods in the Parliament understands just how comparatively gentle is the collegial style of the American Congress, especially the Senate, which Frontline apparently holds as the standard for polite political comportion. Though handled with kid gloves here by those he has betrayed, I doubt someone like Joe Lieberman would survive long as a minister in Chavez's government, or in the House of Lords. And Hank Paulson would certainly have been quickly out on his ass in either. Might Frontline find Chavez awarding Medals of Freedom for poor performance less devastating?
As ominous music swells, Frontline describes the "horror" of how opposition * candidates' identities were "leaked to the internet" as a "blacklist", "jobs were lost, careers ruined". Should we really be horrified that these Venezuelan political opposition candidates share the identical fate as that of many American candidates? What about the sheer "horror" of candidates running for high office being asked to release their tax returns? Or their medical records? I have to wonder what music Frontline would choose to accompany video of me using the net to find which of my neighbors donated over $200 to a political candidate's campaign. Rather than praising openness in political campaigning, Frontline takes a laughably dark view of the same candidate information availability which benefits many Americans.
In describing Chavez's decision to decline renewal of a private television station's broadcast license, Frontline is accurate in saying that Chavez "found an opportunity to silence one of his most vociferous critics", though they failed to put his decision in context of the role that station played in the 2002 coup, covered only too briefly earlier in the program. State television channel 8 was the only Caracas station which remained briefly available to the Chavez administration during the coup, until it was shut down by coup supporters, cutting off all public communications from the legitimate government. As in the United States, broadcasting in Venezuela is considered a public trust and licenses are supposed to be reserved for broadcasters who operate "in the public interest". Frontline did not comment on whether Chavez might simply be applying established regulations with greater stringency than our F.C.C. Frontline does not contemplate the possible fate of an American television station's license renewal after having hosted the co-ordination of a military coup.
In their on-line show description, Frontline teases that Chavez, "puts an Irish journalist in the hot seat", and that he was "harangued by the President". In this segment, Frontline features Chavez's reaction to a question posed by the journalist during a Presidente program, who asks about the inconsistency in pushing to change term limits for the president, but not for state governors. Initially evasive, Chavez returns to answer the question later, but not until after he responds with a verbal assault on what he calls European cynicism and the relative democratic value of the monarchies still surviving in Europe in comparison to his "Bolivarian" concept of democracy. The exchange sounds to me more than a bit like the rhetoric we have all heard in the numerous debates Americans have endured this long election cycle, or what Irv Kupcinet used to describe as "the art of lively discussion". This is a rather typical political performance, certainly not worthy of the tease Frontline advances, and a sure outing of one very thin-skinned journalist. Helen Thomas would not have batted an eye in Chavez's spotlight, and would certainly have come prepared to question him.
The Frontline narration often strives to create a level of drama which seems over the top when contrasted with these rather ordinary and familiar political tactics. There can be little doubt that Chavez's style utilizes rather copious amounts of what is describe as bluster, but the fact is that he openly debates issues, answers questions, listens to criticism, allows public protest, and does not censor, arrest, detain, torture, rendition, or murder either his critics or his political opponents. His Presidente program is the antithesis of governmental secrecy. Frontline fails to recognize that Chavez's open style of governance puts our own current state of governmental procedure to shame.
So Chavez uses his bully pulpit of a television program and his blustery style of argument to promote his agenda. Nothing unusual or even un-American there. Frontline makes no comment about their interviews having shown that Chavez is both openly criticized by supporters and defended by opponents, or that this indicates his actions are relatively free of partisan politics, which is a policy position that our own emerging Obama administration has admirably placed out in front of it's own transitional model.
Frontline, to their credit, reports that Chavez graciously admits his failures, accepts his defeats, and is conciliatory in his victories, and shows that when he lost the bid to extend term limits, he pledged to abide by the electorate's decision, and his first action upon being restored to office after the 2002 coup was to call for calm. But Frontline later contradicts these conciliatory notes by calling Chavez's reaction to his reform losses, "grim and angry", and fades to black leaving in our minds a wildly imaginative claim that a phrase which he has long used, in English "for now", portends an ominously dangerous "threat" to the future of Venezuela.
"The Hugo Chavez Show" closes with a graphic claiming that Chavez barred hundreds of opposition political candidates from running for office in local and regional elections on November 23, 2008. No source is mentioned for the claim. Now that those elections are past, and the results are in, Chavez's political opponents have won governorships in many of the states in which his support is customarily low, as well as the mayoralty of Caracas.
I enjoy informative documentaries, and as always, find some more biased than others. Frontline, which I usually hold in high regard, has provided a basically good primer on the rise and presidency of Hugo Chavez, but the unnecessarily injected drama is often forced and sophomoric. I think Frontline has lost touch with who their viewers are, and the perspective they have gained after having endured these past eight years in America.
Update: On November 25, Frontline added the November 23rd election results to the program close.
*Correction: With input from commenters here, I have learned that the list of names to which Frontline refers is the list of referendum signatories which is claimed to have been used for political purposes. This learning process is the benefit of this on-line community effort.
Frontline refers only to those "who saw their names leaked to the internet" as "the opposition". The rest is left to inference which I, regrettably, misinterpreted. Remarkably, Frontline spends a mere 32 seconds out of an hour and a half program on this issue, which may very well be one of the most substantial criticisms of Chavez's regime, while expending entire segments on embarrassed ministers and unprepared journalists. Perhaps the documentary, "La lista", handles this crucial issue more professionally.
Frontline obviously prefers instead to utilize drama, sparing us the tedium of evaluating clear, factual information. This is exactly the basis of my problem with "The Hugo Chavez show".