TV Urgente

Melodrama, reality and crisis: The government–media relationship in Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution

“…Similarly, most media-focused scholarship about Venezuela is polarized. Its main topics are: the 2004 media content law (Cañizalez, 2005; Ramírez Alvarado, 2007), the media as political actors (Avila, 2010; Cañizalez, 2004; Dinges, 2005; Gottbert, 2004; Hawkins, 2003a), the non-renewal of network RCTV’s licence and closing/non-renewal of media outlets that had an oppositional stance (Bisbal, 2007; Cañizalez, 2007a, 2007b; de Pablos Coello, 2007, 2008; Edwards, 2007; Hellinger, 2007; Pasquali, 2007a), the state of freedom of the press and freedom of expression (Correa, 2009; Pasquali, 2007b), and Chávez’s use of the media and his government’s ‘communicational hegemony’ strategy 1 (Bisbal, 2009b; Cañizalez, 2009, 2012; Cañizalez and Lugo, 2007; Hernández Díaz, 2009; Leary, 2009; Reporters Without Borders, 2011). These scholars’ conclusions generally fall on a continuum between two positions: (1) Hugo Chávez increasingly and significantly limited Venezuelans’ right to freedom of expression, information and of the press; (2) the Chávez government did not threaten these human rights – it is in fact the Venezuelan caudillo who has been demonized by the media.…”