Chávez move underscores media shift

CARACAS -- Arturo Sarmiento speaks English polished at Sandhurst, Britain's military school. He made fortunes trading oil and importing whiskey. Now Sarmiento, just 35 and a staunch supporter of President Hugo Chávez owns an expanding television network.

He is part of new media elite emerging in Venezuela, made up of ideological devotees to Chávez as well as senior government officials and tycoons.

Tempers have flared over Chávez's decision not to renew the license of RCTV, a television station that has been a critic of Chávez, effectively shutting it down today.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched yesterday to the Caracas headquarters of the anti- government station. Waving flags with the RCTV logo, demonstrators packed the streets of the capital, where news anchors and soap opera stars joined in denouncing the order closing the channel.

The new media landscape is a marked contrast with the state of the media when Chávez's rule began in 1999. Then, the industry was largely privately owned by monied interests hostile to him. His supporters say that that old guard -- as markedly partisan as newspapers in the early history of the United States -- actively sought to derail his actions during much of his presidency.

"With the polarization that's befallen Venezuela, media organizations have been used to cause political change," Sarmiento said in a recent interview. He says his ambitions for TeleCaribe, a private broadcaster he bought last year, are different: to provide programming tailored to regional audiences in Venezuela. "Media vehicles should not be engaged in politics," he said.

Governments focused on increasing their grip on power always have media management high on their agenda. Chávez has dueled with media opponents while fortifying news organizations loyal to him.

For instance, newspapers favorable to the government have received nearly 12 times more government advertising, said Andres Canizalez, a researcher at Andrés Bello University, citing a study of four leading dailies.

"Previous administrations in Venezuela also used advertising as a way to consolidate media support," Canizalez said. "The difference now is that the government has made growing its own media operations and combating its opponents in the media central elements of its political strategy."

In what may point to a rare example of widespread disagreement with the popular president, recent polls indicate that most Venezuelans oppose Chávez's decision not to renew RCTV's license.

Still, the move has rallied the president's base. Anti-RCTV graffiti covers walls throughout Caracas alongside criticism of President Bush, whom Chávez regularly derides. Chávez has described RCTV as " putschist," with his disdain for the network intensifying since a group of military officers briefly ousted him in 2002.

The president accuses RCTV and other private broadcasters of supporting what amounted to a 48-hour coup. In RCTV's case, the government says the network colluded with the coup's conspirators by conducting a news blackout after Chávez's removal and broadcasting cartoons when he returned to office two days later.

As Chávez's political power has grown, with loyalists controlling the Supreme Court, the national assembly, and most state governments, RCTV has remained explicitly critical of him. Two other nationwide broadcasters, Televen and Venevision, have curtailed critical coverage. Globovision, a cable news channel, remains critical of him but is viewed by a relatively small part of the population.

Chávez's partisans often say critical coverage of the government illustrates elitist and racist sentiments, while dissidents say the news media are their only outlet for expression, since other institutions are controlled by Chávez. Meanwhile, Chávez's government has created an array of new state media ventures. When he was first elected, the government had one television station and two radio stations. Now there are four new television stations controlled by central and regional governments and seven new radio broadcasters.

Some of the new ventures, like Telesur, a regional cable news network with a pan-Latin American agenda similar to the pan-Arabism of Al - Jazeera, are taking over the operations of private broadcasters. Telesur, based in Caracas and backed largely by Venezuela's government, recently acquired the broadcasting signal of CMT, a private broadcaster, allowing it to reach a wider audience beyond cable.