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05/16/2005:

"And Now, the News in Latin America's View"

CARACAS, Venezuela - The United States has CNN and Fox, while the Arab world can watch Al Jazeera or American-financed Al Iraqiya in Iraq.

Now, an initiative pushed by Hugo Chávez, the left-leaning president of Venezuela, will soon give Latin America Telesur, a regionwide television station that he says is aimed at "counteracting the media dictatorship of the big international news networks."

A venture that involves Argentina, Cuba, Brazil and Uruguay but is largely financed by Venezuela, Telesur will have a decidedly Latin feel, says its director, Aram Aharonian. The station, scheduled to begin broadcasting in July and testing its signal late this month, will show long documentaries about landless peasants in Brazil or indigenous movements in the Andes while offering nitty-gritty reports about politics and sports from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.

The tussle over what is news, and who gets to tell it, is going on in many parts of the world. Here, it goes to the heart of a heated propaganda war that Venezuela's government is intent on winning, both in Venezuela and across Latin America, where Mr. Chávez and his nemesis, the United States, are trolling for support from neighboring countries as they try isolating each other.

Telesur journalists talk of an "antihegemonic network," a not-so-veiled reproach to American media. Anchors on Telesur - which is a truncation of Television of the South - will include journalists like Ati Kiwa, a Colombian Indian who dresses in the traditional white robes of her Arhuaco tribe.

"This is not just my dream, but the dream of many journalists in Latin America, that we will see our own reality on the air," said Mr. Aharonian, 59, an Uruguayan journalist who has lived in Caracas since 1986. "We want to see ourselves through television, showing the diversity and richness."

But critics say that here in a part of the world that has a long tradition of independent journalism, Mr. Chávez's intention is to stifle dissent rather than to broaden coverage with a propaganda machine financed by an ideologically driven government flush with oil money.
Full: nytimes.com

If Chavez is so intent on stifling dissent,why are all the tv stations but ONE in Venezuela run by the opposition? If there's anybody who should know about the 'propaganda' machine, it's the NY Times.