President Chavez Frias talks of plurality in Venezuelan politics ... but is it just another canard (Duck for non-francophones!)

VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: An esteemed friend in Caracas takes me to task for a recent editorial in which I questioned the 3-hour Venezolana de Television (VTV) tele-spectacular on Sunday as replacing 'Alo Presidente' which President Hugo Chavez himself had promised would be suspended until after the November 23 local and regional elections.

The problem is though that if it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck and looks like a duck ... it's reasonable to assume that it is in fact a DUCK!

• Call it a clone of 'Alo Presidente' ... or simply televised coverage of the "inauguration of an eastern gasline project" as my esteemed friend in Caracas would have me believe ... it's still a DUCK!

Did what was otherwise a simple industrial inauguration of a gasline project in eastern Venezuela warrant THREE whole hours of wall-to-wall presidential coverage, thinly disguised as rallying for support of PSUV?

Presidential adviser and Minister of Communications & Information (MinCI) Andres Izarra (remember he was once a news director at RCTV and should know what NEWS is all about!) obviously thinks so for he has since very indignantly and bitterly chided the "opposition" media for NOT giving the presidential PR jippo as extensive coverage as state-owned (NOT PSUV-owned, although they might think it is!) Venezolana de Television (VTV) but, apart from the corporate sponsored personality appearances of Sean Penn and Indy-racer Milka Duno, was there really much in the event to warrant a couple of pages in the local editions of HOLA or somesuch derivative?

• Of course, we don't need to ask the cloned opinion of Izarra's 'bagman' Yuri (I've been a revolutionary for 25 years!) Pimentel ... as president of the state-owned channel, he lost the plot a long time ago!

Let's be rational about it! The 'Alo Presidente' TV show was and is, President Hugo Chavez' opportunity to tell the world and his uncle all about what the Venezuelan government is doing for the Venezuelan people and to tell them of what he's planning for their future. That's his right, and opposition critics can always turn to another cable channel or take a walk in the park if they choose not to listen to what he has to say ... that is their democratic freedom!

BUT to put 'Alo Presidente' in disguise as a Duck and pretend that three hours of TV tube time is necessary to plug the simple inauguration of a project -- any project -- one of many, we might add -- is that NEWS?

Should it warrant as much as a 60-second spot given to the inevitable claptrap of the McCain-Palin comedy act or Barack Obama's flight to Hawaii?

More importantly is it behoven upon the opposition media -- or ANY media in fact -- to fall in step with VTV's lap-dog compliance with all things PSUV, and to become yet another propaganda arm of political unilaterality ... don't think so!

President Chavez Frias talks of plurality in Venezuelan politics but is there any real meaning to it or is it just another canard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard (Duck for non-francophones!)

Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com

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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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