VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: I will certainly admit that I had PREVIOUSLY had a lot of respect for Andres Izarra. I very vocally defended him in London when a typically disinformed member of his conference audience virulently attacked him in claims that he (Andres) had the blood of many dead on his hands as a direct result of the US-funded coup d'etat against President Hugo Chavez Frias!
It was a ridiculous assertion and, basically, illustrated the depths to which the anti-Chavez propaganda machine has been prepared to stoop in attempts to unilaterally force through their polarized view of what had happened during the Laguno Bridge massacre on April 11, 2002.
Suffice to say, Izarra wasn't even at the scene of the tragic event... He was, in fact, caught in a decisive quandary of his own at Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) HQ elsewhere in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, about to make up his mind to resign rather than to accept RCTV boss, Marcel Granier's edict to pull live coverage of what was happening on the streets of Caracas and, instead, to broadcast Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons.
I applauded Izarra's courageous career decision, then, to walk out of his job as a news director at RCTV. He had had the cojones to tell Granier to stuff the well-paid job rather than allow himself to become part of a censorship machinery that was a prelude to what 'Dictator for a Day' Pedro Carmona Estanga envisaged for a post-Chavez dictatorship.
I recognized in Andres Izarra, a professionalism that belies the fact that he has NEVER achieved any academic journalistic qualifications in a country where the law demands that -- even if you are plucked from the latest clutch of Miss Venezuelas to front a TV news-slot -- you have to have a suitable Venezuelan university degree in media studies under your belt as well as membership of the Venezuelan CNP (Reporters Union). The latter, of course, is in violation of international norms on freedom of the press, but that's another issue all of its own!
Andres went on to better (?) things at the press department of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC before returning to as spinmeister-in-chief to Chavez' campaign to confront opposition efforts to have his presidency cut short in a 2004 national referendum -- which Chavez won!
Shortly thereafter, he was on the move again ... this time to take up responsibilities as Venezuela's Minister of Communications & Information (Minci), regrettably upgrading false-flagged Yuri (I've been a revolutionary for 25 years) Pimentel as his deputy on secondment from the Libertador Municipality's office for brochure production. Pimentel (decribed astutely in Verdades de Miguel recently as Izarra's "bag-man") helped form what was to become a Tom & Jerry team, variously focused on the deputy minister's inabilities and incompetencies at MinCI HQ while Andres occupied more salubrious quarters at the Miraflores Palace in close proximity to his father, William Izarra's student of political sciences, President Hugo Chavez Frias.
Whether by fatherly intervention or plain happenstance, Andres accelerated through the Venezuelan administration's power hierarchy and saw the fulfillment of his personal ambitions of media empire building as president of the pan-Latino version of CNN, TeleSur through its infancy ... but regrettably with 'bag-man' Pimentel in tow.
Whatever happened with TeleSur is obscured in political fogginess, but Tom & Jerry (Andres y Yuri) were soon back at MinCi as it became more sectarian, more polarized and more simply as a megaphone exclusively to enforce for the President's unilateral ideas of how the left and lefter-of-left party structures in Venezuelan politics should be forced to submit to fiefdom under the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) launched in January this year in a frightening emulation of the 1919 institution of the NSDAP or more recently Zimbabwe's original efforts after 1980 independence to form a one-party state.
Whatever....
Andres Izarra's further career as Minister of Communications & Information has, of course, been blighted by sillier controversies occasioned by hapless Pimentel who, in charge of the cookie jar at Venezolana de Television (VTV) actually decided to try to charge opposition television channels for the "privilege" of using newsworthy snippets from VTV's eternal broadcastings of President Hugo Chavez' effusive speechifyings (from which opposition media are ignominiously excluded). Pimentel's goose was saved from imminent roasting by Izarra's threat to turn in his badge to the President, all of which was conveniently forgotten about in a matter of a a week or ten days while the Tom & Jerry charade continues to this very day.
- But, here and now, I will unequivocally state that all my previous thoughts in favor of Andres Izarra are totally misconceived ... for the man has turned into a veritable media monster, well on the way to copycatting Cisneros, Rupert Murdoch and more deviously Abramovich Berezovsky.
It has taken time ... but now Izarra has exposed his true nature in an arrogant assertion broadcast in the last few days on 'bag-man' Pimentel's Venezolana de Television (VTV) where -- at the height of the November 23 election run-up -- he had the gall, the audacity, to attempt to criminalize all and any media that does NOT surrender itself to the Chavez government's unilateral hype.
Adopting what he presumably considers to be the political-ethical high ground, Izarra said that HE (the government) "will NOT invest advertising funds" in media that HE considers to allied to other than the pro-Chavez camp.
Loosely translated this means: "either submit yourselves to MY (Izarra's) concept of what should be published in your newspapers ... or Go to Hell!"The sentiment hearkens back to tales of old Wild West (of North America) publishers setting up their presses in new settlements on the covered wagon trails, where the concept of a free and vibrant press was still a lesson to be learned through a succession of assassinations of editors, arson attacks on newspaper offices and printing presses and all sorts of violent pre-Mafia excesses brought to bear on original Constitutional rights to individual freedom...
Over the last couple of centuries we now know that independent media has aIs this really what Andres Izarra -- who originally defended the general public's right to know the news about President Hugo Chavez' return to democratic power in 2002 --- is this really what Andres Izarra TRULY means by saying that he will limit public service (a.k.a. government advertising) only to subservient pro-Chavez media outlets?
constant battle against all sorts of unholy influences, each vying for the
editorial strangulation of the TRUTH using all nefarious means available
to them ... usually money and continuing threats of violence.
Is it Andres Izarra's true intent to starve the opposition media into submission to his edict? He'd better think again because such a 'dirty trick' from someone supposedly in a position of governmental influence will only engender even more hostility to the President's cause, whether or not that cause is any longer connected to the real world of what is best for Venezuelans or not! For surely, the opposition media will survive whether or not they receive ten pieces of silver from Chavez' coffers or nay! And youthful Izarra should be mindful of the fact that 50-something Chavez is NOT immortal and cannot last for ever...
Yes, we know that the privately-owned opposition media can be a pain in the ass to the Chavez government ... but hey! That's all part of democracy! Live with it!
Besides which, advertising is NOT -- or should NOT -- be charity given or received. Advertising in any newspaper, radio or TV medium is predicated by the advertiser's expectation of gain from dissemination of his/her/its commercial expectation of gaining market advantage (profit) or of informing the general public as to what the the advertiser wishes to be made publicly known. It is not for nothing that an advertiser chooses the best and most widely appreciated platform for his advertising and there's little point, anyway, in preaching a message to the already converted when there are thousands if not millions waiting in the wings in the alternative and/or opposition media who could reasonably benefit from the delivery of rational messages through their medium.
Izarra throwing the toys out of his pram because Chavez, his leader, comes under constant criticism is infantile in the extreme.
It basically shows that he has NO cogent answer to the plethora of questions raised as to why Chavez seems completely out of control of his administration ... why the employees at CVG in Bolivar State and forgotten-about miners in the south of that selfsame state are being told that there's no money in the kitty to pay what they;re owed, or to make critical investments in factory machinery etc., etc., while President Chavez flits hither and thither across the world signing massive loan contracts to pay for fighter jets, submarines and even more heavy weapons AND giving money hither and thither to everyone else around the world EXCEPT the incredibly poor proles in his own country who have been waiting these last ten years for some shred of evidence that Chavez is a man of his word!
Izarra's latent desires to impose 'Goebbels-esque' conditions on reporting the TRUTH about Venezuela is just one of the evidences of double-morals rampant within the confines of Chavez' immediate Praetorian Guard. How else can we explain, after Izarra's edict on NOT investing advertising in the anti-Chavez media, that the Venezuela-owned CITGO Corporation spends huge sums of money "investing in advertising" on the likes of Fox News USA, the Houston Chronicle, The New York Times ... or even massive advertising sums deployed to a very limited readership in a Washington Post splurge of advertising for a 'whatever the non-event' subject was at the Venezuelan Embassy in that city?
Perhaps it is just that Izarra sees the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox News etc in a different light than his "advertising investment?" ban on un-subservient media outlets in Venezuela's own jurisdiction.
Perhaps also, the cited US media would tell Izarra and his 'bag-man' Pimentel where to take their sorry asses if they even ventured to suggest that they (the USA media) should conform commit themselves to forced contracts as 'most favored' Venezuelan government suppliers and agree to payment in exchange-restricted (basically value-less) Venezuelan Bolivares?I'm quite sure that quite a number of blue-clouded expletives would be heard from Houston, Washington, New York etc., in the aftermath of any such foolhardy suggestion.
...and I'm equally sure that Venezuela's international media image would career over the precipice on which it is already teetering if, mayhap, Izarra and his revolutionary henchman of 25 years should continue such lunacy!
Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com
Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.
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