Venezuelan journalist speaks at Tufts about press freedom

Boris Muñoz, Venezuelan journalist and 2010 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, spoke yesterday about the freedom of the press in Venezuela.  The event, titled "Freedom of the Press in Latin America: A Conversation with Boris Muñoz," was hosted by Tufts Latin American Committee.

Muñoz, who has worked in many Latin American countries, focused primarily on his experience in Venezuela, which he described as a country overtaken by seven plagues. These include insecurity and street violence -- Muñoz noted that Venezuela currently has one of the highest homicide rates -- as well as inflation, institutional collapse and shortages in goods ranging from auto parts to medicine.

"[The medicine shortage] also has a very strong retribution on the health system, which is in crisis," he added.

Muñoz also cited heavy political polarization, noting that political gridlock has made it difficult to pass policies and find a minimum consensus to put forward necessary reforms. He explained that this "creates an environment that is very, very toxic.”

Given the amount of problems that the country is facing, Muñoz said that it is a wonder that Venezuela is not a paradise for journalists, but explained that there has been a "progressive curtailing of freedom of speech" from the Venezuelan government.

"What happens in a place where information is tightly controlled?” Muñoz asked.

He underscored the role of media and journalism in allowing citizens to be critical of the government.

"The implementation of checks and balances … becomes almost impossible to practice," Muñoz said. "Those that control … are not held accountable."

The Venezuelan government has established different kinds of regulations and policies to protect itself from the influence of journalism under "the premise that journalists and media are serious threats to the government's power," he explained.

"If information is negative, the public perception is that the government is doing bad," Muñoz said.

Thus, the government has looked to expand a hegemonic media landscape.

"Hegemony of the media and authoritarianism go hand in hand," Muñoz noted.

Today, the possibility of establishing an effective authoritarian regime is nearly impossible without controlling the public's access to information, he said. Venezuela now proscribes to a political regime which Muñoz described as "neo-authoritarianism," which is in theory more open to some kinds of freedoms.

Muñoz also discussed the ideology and former political system of Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela. He noted that Chávez was not authoritarian at the beginning of his regime, initially entering office with promises of reform and democratization.

"His authoritarianism appeared gradually, but at the same time, we can say that Chávez was totally aware of the importance of media when he came to power in 1999," he said.

Muñoz explained that after Chávez's election, the media began to attack the government directly.

"[Chávez] already at that time in 1999 told one of his closest advisors that he wanted to pick a fight with private media, and he actually did," he said.

Chávez portrayed private media as on the side of oligarchs and began to openly confront media outlets around 1999 for the next decade, initiating a harsh period of confrontation that has been called a "media war," according to Muñoz.

During this period, many private media outlets criticized the government on a daily basis, not only with information and opinion, but also through the fabrication of facts, ultimately leading to an attempted coup d'état against Chávez in 2002.

Chávez, however, survived, and he realized just how dangerous private media could be, according to Muñoz. The coup was bad for private media, as it created general distrust toward the role of private media in society and gave Chávez an opportunity to openly confront the press. Chávez realized that he "needed to create a hegemonic media platform."

After winning a 2004 recall referendum, Chávez began to develop a strategy which specifically mentioned media hegemony and the push for state-owned media platforms.

"The government also created a set of legislation to keep the private media and journalists under a tight leash," Muñoz said.

Features of the new legislation included frequent presidential broadcasts on all channels simultaneously, denigrating remarks and threats against journalists and media owners and attacks on reporters, photographers and broadcasting facilities, according to Muñoz.

"Hegemony also meant real power," he said. "The demonstration of this power was the closure of Radio Caracas Televisión [Internacional (RCTV)] in 2007."

The refusal to renew RCTV's broadcast license led to protests in May 2007.

"From that moment, the confrontation became even more aggressive -- it went against radio [and] newspapers,” Muñoz said.

However, some public disapproval cautioned Chávez that he could only go so far, he added.

"Chávez died a year and a half ago -- I think that his death signals the end of the hegemony period and starts a new period in which [President of Venezuela] Nicolás Maduro has demonstrated to be more subtle and more brutal at the same time," Muñoz explained.

He underscored that the primary difference is that Chávez looked to keep the press suffocated but not dead, while Maduro is actively trying to annihilate the freedom of the press, launching a hostile overtaking of private media by buying out private news sources. As an example, Muñoz cited the sale of Globovisión -- the most important media source for the opposition -- to a group of businessmen with close ties to the government last year.

"This is a new kind of strategy that in summary curtails freedom of the press inexorably, and it’s going to progressively annihilate it,” Muñoz said.

Nevertheless, Muñoz concluded that is is vital that journalists continue to employ all capacities to report, tell and denounce the "plagues" that affect Venezuelan society.