The Chávez Monologues

Communists and others who adore Hugo Chávez do their best to camouflage or trivialise Venezuela’s move towards totalitarianism. When the Chávez regime decided to close the only independent television station earlier this year, I was called a liar and exaggerator after saying that this was an action taken by a mad dictator in order to silence every opposition. But recent developments have proven me right. Chávez’s media politics is all about control and establishing a one-man state. From an article in The Economist:

It is not clear how depriving most of the poor, who lack cable and satellite, of what was their favourite channel amounts to "democratisation of the air-waves", as the government claims. TVes, the new state-run channel which now occupies RCTV’s Channel 2 slot, has struggled to reach a tenth of its predecessor’s rating. TVes is supposedly a public-service station. But it has swiftly scrapped the newscasts it had commissioned from an independent producer. They were of poor quality, but the reason given by Lil Rodríguez, the channel’s director, was that: "The editorial line must be determined by the company."

Perhaps foreseeing increased take-up of cable and satellite, the information minister suggested that these channels may soon be obliged to carry the (frequent and interminable) speeches to the nation of Mr Chávez, which all free-to-air television and radio stations must broadcast.