Tuesday, September 20, 2016
8:39 PM |
The Fate of ‘Bias’ Media, Courtesy of Hugo Chavez
All this talk about media being biased, being “dilaw,” being a force of destabilization may have a purpose after all. They set the grounds and the mind-set for a possible eventual erasure, or at least diminishment, of freedom of speech -- and the formula may be old. It is Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan media adventure. In the book The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy by William J. Dobson, we first get a glimpse of the Televison Chavez, a man with a rambling TV show where he rants and lambasts and make bold pronouncements... We don’t have a current national equivalent for that yet, but it pays to remember that Davao would know of a similar TV show for years, something called Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa. Now there’s talk of making that a nationwide show.
Is Venezuela’s past our future?
Read the excerpt from the book:
The centerpiece of Chavez's media universe is his unscripted Sunday afternoon television show,
Aló, Presidente (Hello, President). Here, each week, Chavez sings, dances, rams, raves, shouts, jokes, questions, reports, prays, and — sometimes — calls Fidel Castro on the telephone. The show has no precise running time, although it averages a little less than five hours. It is a rambling program that resembles a telethon with a heavy dose of politics — a cross between Jerry Lewis and Glenn Beck but with an emphasis on “the socialism of the twenty-first century.” (For the show’s tenth anniversary, he aired a four-day special episode.) Chavez will often use the show to visit government projects, lambaste his opponents, or denounce the United States. As he downs one cup of coffee after another, he unveils new policies and makes bold announcements. Famously, during one episode, he ordered the head of the military to send ten tank battalions to the Venezuelan-Colombian border. Special guests have included Danny Glover, Diego Maradona, and, of course, Fidel.
Although the showman never acts like a head of state, one of the program's more important elements is the picture it gives of Chavez governing. Amid his monologues and impromptu tirades, Chavez will quiz his ministers — whose attendance is mandatory — often berating them for their failings. The Comandante has even been known to fire a minister live on television. The whole lot of them sit among the audience, wearing socialist red, their heads tilted down, praying that they are not called out on a whim. Chavez dressing down a hapless minister for the pleasure of the viewing audience on national television is what passes for accountability in Venezuela today. It is also a vital part of the image making that keeps him blameless for the country's mounting troubles. The message is clear: if the incompetent ministers and bureaucrats would only do what Chavez told them to do, everything would be fine.
If Chavez's antics are unrehearsed, his creation of a media state is anything but spontaneous. It began in the wake of the April 2002 coup. When Chavez came to power, the Venezuelan government operated one state television channel and two radio stations, and Chavez had done surprisingly little to change that in the early years of his presidency. After the coup, Chavez saw the crucial role the media played in shaping events and, in his view, encouraging his ouster. He referred to the four private television channels as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. "[Chavez's government] saw how weak they were after April 11, 2002," says Canizalez, referring to the short-lived coup. "They realized they were a communication minority, so they developed a strategy to create a strong media infrastructure."
In 2004, the National Assembly provided the government with the legal framework to control the media. The government was given broad discretionary powers to punish slander and disrespect of public officials. Defamation of the president can lead to thirty months in prison, and the government has the right to impose hefty fines on any media company for "offending" public authorities. Two of the major television channels — Venevision and Televen — soon changed their editorial stance to fall in line with the government's wishes. Politically objectionable shows were canceled, and the channels’ focus shifted to entertainment. In one telling example, a popular political talk show was replaced with a program on astrology and tarot readings. A third channel, RCTV, was closed, and the fourth, Globovision, remains in a bitter struggle with the government, always under the threat of sanctions. (In October 2011, for example, Globovision was fined $2 million for reporting on deadly prison riots a few months earlier.) Meanwhile, Chavez has poured millions into creating his own pro-government media conglomerate. Today, there are six government television channels, two national radio stations, three thousand community radio stations, three print media companies, and a growing presence on the Internet. “These channels are clearly a propaganda machine of the state,” Cañizález told me. “It is sort of what you would think of the official state TV of Cuba.”
Perhaps the regime's most sophisticated tool has simply been uncertainty. In August 2009, Chavez shuttered 34 radio stations for alleged “administrative infractions.” At the same time, the government announced that it was investigating 240 other stations for similar violations. However, it never specified which stations were under its microscope, nor did it intend to notify them. With the threat of closure already made real, the government knew the stations would do its censorship for it. In such an environment, any story that comes too close to the edge is either watered down or killed. “Their strategy is to keep them on their heels,” says Cañizález. “This is a way that media critical of the government can exist, but always under threat and at a high cost. Because the government doesn't give a clear set of rules, it puts independent media in a constant state of uncertainty.”
Get the book here.Labels: books, dictatorships, issues, media, politics
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
9:05 PM |
The Fascination for Fascism and the Fear of Freedom
Talk of politics is a slippery slope of a topic I never wish to engage in. Its nature is very much like the morbid reality of Internet comments—you just don’t go there if you wish for your sanity to prevail. You don’t go there either if you want friendships to be preserved.
But—with the national elections just around the corner—it is the high season for all things politics. I will allow myself this singular instance to dip myself in the murky waters. It will never happen again.
But I think you know what I mean when you are tight with someone, for example, and one day, that someone proclaims in Facebook: “Marcos was a good President—and I’m voting for his son Bongbong for Vice President.” Or: “Binay is our savior.” Or: “I’m all for Poe.” Or: “Roxas is the man.” And you are left reeling, asking the bewildered question:
Who are you, and what have you done with my friend?
In other words, politics is the lens with which we demonize ourselves to other people.
The truth of the matter is, human nature and the way we have come to shape our principles—a sense of politics included—is a dark mystery for which we can only begin to understand by invoking this cliché: the heart wants what it wants. Reason or logic is not part and parcel of this. You can do a long litany of the many provable abuses committed by the Marcos regime, and the diehard Marcosian will still turn a deaf ear till he’s blue in the face. You can cite the shenanigans of Miriam Defensor-Santiago during the impeachment trial versus Joseph Estrada, and her fans will throw copies of Stupid is Forever at your face in righteous indignation.
Nobody wants facts (or platforms) in politics. The heart just wants what it wants.
Which is why I actually do get the widespread support for Rodrigo Duterte or the lingering longing for the Marcos dictatorship among many of my friends—many of whom are close to me, and whom I know are perfectly decent human beings. I, of course, will always raise an eyebrow when any of them proclaim their [suspect] politics with such ferocity on social media—but I also understand that they probably do the same to mine. (You’re probably reading this right now, and muttering: “This is utter bullshit, Ian.”)
But if you really want to understand where these two particular stirrings for Duterte or Marcos come from, it’s important to study history and psychology.
In the first instance, I invite you to take a close look at the crippling post-First World War conditions in Germany that gave rise, especially among the youths, to a widespread longing for “national dignity.” This culminated in the eventual popularity of Adolf Hitler, who promised order and embodied tough charisma.
Read Jon Savage’s
Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture (2008) for this. In his book, Savage paints a portrait of German youths demoralized and frustrated with the decay of social systems and the seemingly unmanageable culture of graft and corruption in government, so much so that being German had become a sullied identity. (Sounds familiar?) There was no sense of national pride. It was also the same in pre-World War II Italy, which saw the rise of Benito Mussolini. These two fascist dictators rose to massive fame on separate but identical platforms of tough-mindedness that bordered on militaristic hysteria—and the young of Italy and Germany, all of them in need of a superhero, lapped it up and were the first to embrace the spectacle of their toughness. Mussolini and Hitler knew that the way to control the destiny of their nations was through their nation’s youths—and both did indeed bring back a sense of pride of being Italian and German, but the bloody aftermath of World War II would, of course, show the high price that was paid for the fascism that they embodied.
In the second instance, it is also wise to understand why most people are actually scared of “freedom.” It pays to read Erich Fromm’s seminal
The Fear of Freedom (1941) to understand what seems to be a conundrum of a thesis—because who doesn’t love freedom? Isn’t it an ideal we all long for and fight for? But to quote Alexey Yanovski: “Freedom is uncomfortable. Freedom is unknown, which is scary. Very few people actually want freedom. They prefer formulas.” This is true. In his pathbreaking book, Fromm posits that in the process of becoming freed from an iron-fisted authority (say, Marcos), we are often left with feelings of hopelessness that will not abate until we develop some form of replacement of the old order (say, Marcos Jr.).
The best way, perhaps, for anyone to understand this is to recall the movie
The Matrix, directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski in 1999. Think about Neo’s (Keanu Reeves) ultimate choice in that film, as intoned by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne): “This is your last chance,” Morpheus tells Neo in the inciting incident of the story. “After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
The red pill is freedom—but freedom also means the horror and bitterness of knowing for real what has become of humanity—i.e., batteries for harvesting by robot overlords—and surrendering to a life where nothing remains constant, and everything is fraught with danger. The blue pill is remaining in the trap of the Matrix—a prison, yes, but it is a comfortable prison, a dream really, where “life” seems to go on in the ordinary ways it unfolds.
I think, given the tough choice, most people would choose the blue pill, freedom forfeited. Only the truly strong will take the red pill and everything that freedom promises—a life of uncertainty and inheriting the terrible charge of having to truly shape, by yourself, your own path and destiny. According to Fromm, psychology-speaking, human beings are hardwired to want to be told what to do, to be herded around like sheep by a higher authority.
Sounds familiar?
In other words, we're f****d.
But enough about the psychology of politics.
[Photos from Rappler and Warner Bros]Labels: books, dictatorships, fascism, history, issues, politics, psychology
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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