Venezuela


April 20, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Last weekend's short-lived military coup in Venezuela has left most of the media there with much to apologize for. When President Hugo Chavez appeared to have been removed from office, newspapers rushed to publish congratulatory ads, celebrating the end of the ex-president of the ex-democratic government. But on the day after the coup crumbled, most major newspapers failed even to print a daily edition, and Venezuelan television offered little of the Chavez return to power. The media's jubilation followed by its silence fueled speculation that they themselves were complicit in the attempt to topple the president. NPR's South American correspondent Martin Kaste has just returned from Venezuela and he joins us to assess the egg-smeared faces of the Venezuelan media. Martin, thanks for coming on the show.

MARTIN KASTE: No problem.

BOB GARFIELD: You said in one of your stories that the media have some explaining to do. What did you mean by that?

MARTIN KASTE: What I meant by that is that a lot, lot of people in Venezuela, especially those sympathetic to President Chavez simply believed that the commercial media in Venezuela omitted any reporting of the pro-Chavez demonstrations in the ours and, and day right after the coup. As you point out television was not covering it as sort of a blow by blow basis on Saturday as the coup was crumbling and as Chavez's supporters were coming out in the streets --we were watching cartoons and-- and exercise shows, and it was, it was eerie -- the difference between what was happening in the streets and what you saw on television.

BOB GARFIELD:So if you were a Chavez supporter, there was nothing that the media did after the coup to disabuse you of your sense that they were out to get him from the beginning.

MARTIN KASTE: In fact, not even if you were just a Chavez supporter. What's interesting about the whole situation -- a lot of Venezuelans I talked to that day - the end of Friday and on Saturday -who were not Chavez supporters -- frankly disliked him intensely - they were, they were appalled! They-- saw this as a coup d'etat, and that was what it was, and they were appalled at the, at how the media had simply accepted it! How there were full page ads in, in these newspapers celebrating what had happened, and the whole thing was, was Orwellian in, in their view and the rhetoric that the media used to describe what had happened I think was deeply disturbing, even for people that didn't support Chavez.

BOB GARFIELD:Now since President Chavez was returned to office there's been some hand-wringing in the media. The general manager of Globovision, the, the news channel apologized?

MARTIN KASTE: Yeah, they ran that all day on Tuesday. It was, if memory serves, about a 10 minute monologue where he sat at the anchor's desk there and he was wearing his Globovision jacket and he looked straight in the camera and he apologized but then also explained and justify [sic] -- I mean he never go to the point where he said we consciously decided to undermine the president, but he apologized for the network's simple disappearance - missing in action on Saturday in terms of reporting what was going on hour by hour, and he explained it in part with this argument about the danger to reporters. And I think these reporters, in their defense, really were very afraid. At one point on Saturday night when - as the coup was crumbling and the Chavez supporters were getting the upper hand - they were transmitting from the basement of a Globovision building, appealing directly to the camera desperately not to be killed. You know the - and while they were doing this there were mobs of people around their station and other commercial stations. So-- there was some fear and, and-- I - if I were a cameraman I'm not sure I - you know, if I were a Venezuelan cameraman, I would have thought 3 times before going out at that moment.

BOB GARFIELD:Well if Globovision was institutionally chastened, what about Chavez himself. He has been very rough in his public statements against the press, perceived at least to be rallying his supporters into violence against the press. Has he apologized for his - at all for his anti-press stand?

MARTIN KASTE: He's-- what he's done is he's repeated past calls in his re--supporters not to attack reporters. Probably most, most importantly he hinted, although he didn't say flat out, that he went a little too far in his use of what they call "the national network." Venezuelan law allows the president to simply commandeer the airwaves for important announcements and speeches. He's been using this to death for the last few years. He will just pre-empt whatever's on, all stations, all radio stations and TV stations. And, and in the days leading up to the coup he was doing this more and more and more and to the point where on Thursday as this huge anti-Chavez rally was building outside the palace, he simply imposed this national network rule on the networks and forced them not to cover or not to show images of this rally, and they finally rebelled, and they split their screens and showed Chavez calmly telling the nation that everything was fine on one side of the screen, and on the other they were showing a hundred thousand people plus converging on the, on the palace, and some of them getting shot.

BOB GARFIELD: Did you feel that you were in danger when you were covering the situation there?

MARTIN KASTE:I was a little apprehensive at first, but it quickly became apparent that once you made it clear that you were a foreign journalist, especially Chavez's supporters were very eager to talk to you, because they - their perception was that the only way to get their message out was via the foreign press.

BOB GARFIELD: And-- that wasn't necessarily a paranoid suspicion on their parts.

MARTIN KASTE:Yeah, I think at that moment-- there was very little reporting being done domestically, period, so for whatever, whatever motive -- it wasn't happening.

BOB GARFIELD: Martin, thank you very much.

MARTIN KASTE: You're welcome.

BOB GARFIELD: Martin Kaste is the South America reporter for NPR.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now the coverage of Venezuela's upheaval in the U.S. press has also been arguably odd. Oddest of all has been the behavior of the New York Times' editorial page. Last week it held the military removal of an elected president -- it didn't use the word "coup" -- as a positive step for Venezuelan democracy. Then this week the Times' editorial page conceded that it may have, quote, "overlooked the undemocratic manner in which Chavez was removed." Rachel Coen is media analyst for the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. You've been tracking this. The Times' behavior wasn't especially unusual. What gives?

RACHEL COEN: You're right. The Times wasn't unusual in this, unfortunately. Many of our top-circulation, prestigious papers reacted basically by applauding the coup -- although most of them didn't call it a coup -- the Chicago Tribune also did this. Their first editorial on April 14th said: "It's not every day that a democracy benefits from the military's intervention to force out an elected president--"

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I should say not!

RACHEL COEN:-- [LAUGHS] and in the Times even their apology or half-apology in their second editorial on Venezuela, they still stood their ground on the fact that the coup might be good in the long run. You know they emphasized, quote "We hope Mr. Chavez will act as a more responsible and moderate leader now that he seems to realize the anger that he has stirred," you know suggesting there that, well you know a military coup - we shouldn't cheer it but perhaps it's a good slap on the wrist for the president there.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:It seems to have benefitted the newspapers to withhold judgment for a couple of days. The L.A. Times gave a slightly more tempered initial reaction because it did wait a few days.

RACHEL COEN: That's true. The L.A. Times didn't run an editorial until April 17th, after the dust had settled a little bit. They were frank in pointing out that quote "It's one thing to oppose policies and another to back a coup." But they were also pretty critical of Chavez and dismissive of his status as an elected leader. You know they wrote that, quote "It goes against the grain to put the name Hugo Chavez and the word democracy in the same sentence."

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But there's nothing wrong with condemning a bad leader, is there?

RACHEL COEN:No! That's a good thing for newspapers to do in editorials is to talk about policy, but I do find it disturbing when that turns into overlooking, as the New York Times put it, "a military intervention in a democracy."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well interestingly enough, the Washington Post, the hometown paper of the federal government, seems to have had the most tempered reaction from the start!

RACHEL COEN: That's true. The Washington Post's first editorial came out on April 14th, and it led with the statement that any interruption of democracy in Latin America is wrong; the moreso when it involves the military. They were almost alone among the big papers in being that straightforward about it. But about the Post, even there they made a point in that editorial of saying quote "There's been no suggestion that the United States had anything to do with this Latin America coup," which was a curious thing to do so early on because the details were so unclear as we've seen in the Post's own pages.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But there is as yet no proof that the United States had an active hand in this coup, is there?

RACHEL COEN:No, but there are good reasons to ask questions about it and not to dismiss it right away. The Washington Post and the New York Times have both run really interesting news reports saying that Pentagon and U.S. State Department officials were for months meeting with coup leaders and talking about removing Chavez with them. Now these are all, you know, unsubstantiated and they all need investigating. It's just an interesting and rather troubling thing that on the editorial pages the main reaction has still been initially not to call it a coup and to suggest that it might be a good thing rather than to highlight the serious questions about what this means for democracy not only in Latin America but in the U.S., considering the U.S.'s long history of involvement in Latin American turmoils and coups.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well Rachel Coen, thank you very much.

RACHEL COEN: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rachel Coen is media analyst for the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.