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May 15, 2005
Telesur: Al Jazeera in Spanish
Posted by Dave Blount at May 15, 2005 4:17 PM
Apparently not content to let CNN do the job, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is planning his own 24-hour news service to disseminate leftist rhetoric throughout Latin America, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Chavez's Telesur network doesn't launch until May 24, but comparisons are already being made to Al Jazeera, the government-funded network in Qatar that specializes in over-the-top propaganda that is so viciously anti-American as to earn the approval of Columbia journalism professor John Dinges, an ivory tower moonbat who censures Fox News for being "political" as he praises the potential of Chavez's network to provide "an alternative journalistic voice."
People unfortunate enough to live in the hellhole Chavez is making out of Venezuela are less enthusiastic. Ana Cristina Nuñez is legal counsel at Globovision, a 24-hour local news station that is legally obligated to preempt whatever it has on whenever Chavez wants to launch one of his hours-long rants on the evils of America. She was hired in response to Chavez's crackdown on the free press. Under new laws, anyone who "offends," "shows disrespect for," or "defames" El Loco or his cronies can get up to 30 months in prison. Nuñez's job is to try to interpret the intentionally vague laws, which basically allow the government to throw into jail any journalist who says anything Chavez doesn't like.
"Telesur is introducing a super-well-funded official voice, just as free-press voices are being fined and intimidated," Nuñez observes. "Coincidence?"
