Ho boy, I seem to have trod in a hornet’s nest over at The Devil’s Excrement. Miguel apparently objects to a bill that sets out to ensure unbiased media:

If anyone still believes that Hugo Chavez and his MVR have any concern for democracy, free speech or civil rights. I quote directly from the proposed bill, written, proposed and supported only by Chavez’s Deputies in teh National Assembly (Translated by me as acurately as possible);

“Article 6. paragraph 2. Participation requires of a State policy in all its instances and levels, to guarantee true and plural information to all citizens and to facilitate access to the same media for the free exercise of freedom speech”

Imagine this, the State is the guarantor of truth and plural information. Sounds like censorship to me

Doesn’t sound like censorship to me at all. Sounds to me as if Chavez want to guarantee access correct and unbiased information to all of Venezuela’s citizens. It even says so: facilitate access to the same media for the free exercise of freedom speech.

Right. Next:

Article 52 Paragraph 3. Any call for a referendum…..Equally, the next day following publication, it will be broadcast for free through the communications media, both private and public, if it is a natioanl refrendum and by those of teh areas affected by it in the other cases. This publication will bee done for free up to three times during teh campaign”

Paragraph 4. All communicatiosn media, both private and public, will have to disseminate for free an isntitutional campaign to promote citizen participation, without the possibility of giving an opinion as to the content of the vote.

Again I ask why? If private media have to do this for free, why should the state have radio or TV stations or even newspapers. I thought that these were in charge of doing this. Once again this is like a new tax.

Uh huh. I still don’t see the problem here. I may have completely misunderstood, but am I correct in paraphrasing art. 52 § 3-4 as “if there’s a referendum all media will brodcast this information for free and call on potential voters to exercise their democratical right”?

And whatever is wring with state broadcasting? I can imagine it may sound bad if you think of the North Korean of Lybian or Iraqi State Broadcasting Companies (don’t know if they exist, but I should guess so), but think of PBS, or of the BBC, or even of our very own VRT. A state broadcast can, again, be an excellent provider of unbiased, non-commercial information to the general public. Yes it can be used as a propaganda instrument, but the proposed bill deals with this too (see later).

Right, next problem:

Now it gets even better

“Article 59, pargraph 4. The National Electoral Council will have to watch so that all communications media, both public and private, provide an equilibrated treatment in news broadcasts, opinion programs and debates of the positions for or against the question taht is the object of a referendum. Not fullfilling this by any media will be sanctioned according to this law and others that regulate the matter”

Read: CENSORSHIP. This is simply outright censorship. As an example, imagine a referendum to impeach President Chavez, the media will have to provide balanced views of for and against, even in the case that 90% of tehe popalation is in favor of impeaching him. Moreover, if you don’t do so, your concession may be closed. Hello!! Freedom of Speech???. Imagine the minimun group of people possible get together to ask for a referendum and they have to have 50% propaganda. Sounds like limiting freedom of speech  to me.

Again, I’m not sure if I understand this right: giving unbiased information and fostering debate will be enforced, and this is bad thing? If this means forcing the media to let both sides present their arguments to the public, where’s the censorship in that?

“Article 131: For the control of the fullfillemnt of the acces to all media, truth and impartiality by all citizens……the National Council of Supervision of the media is created”

The actual word in Spanish for supervision used in the bill is “vigilancia”. I guess the name of the Council says it all. Censorship, censorship, censorship.

Of course there should a national council for the supervision of the media: I wouldn’t trust privately owned companies, by definition only in existence to make more money and certainly not “for the good of the people”, to supervise themselves.

Go down that route and you end up with the so-called liberal media as you have them in the States: pandering to big business, ergo in the main completely rightist.

I’m pretty confident I can find about the same rules Miguel seem to object to in Belgian law and regulations. And I’d hardly call Belgium a dicatatorial regime.