Venezuelans Protest TV Move

May 28, 01:40 PM

Current Headlines: By Simon Romero New York Times News Service

CARACAS, Venezuela -- With just hours to go until this country's oldest television network was to be taken off the air after 53 years of broadcasting, thousands took to the streets here on Sunday in competing demonstrations.

Groups who support President Hugo Chavez flooded a central area of Caracas to celebrate his decision not to renew the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV, which has been one of his most vocal critics. Others came out to protest the decision.

RCTV's signal will be transferred to a new state broadcasting company, part of a growing array of state and private media ventures that are supportive of Chavez.

The president has defended the RCTV decision, saying that the network actively supported a coup that briefly removed him from office in 2002.

RCTV's news programs regularly deride Chavez's Socialist- inspired transformation of Venezuelan society. "RCTV lacks respect for the Venezuelan people," said Onan Mauricio Aristigueta, 46, a messenger at the National Assembly who showed up to support the president.

Chavez has left untouched the operations of other private broadcasters who were also critical of him at the time of the 2002 coup but who have subsequently changed editorial policies to stop criticizing his government. That has led Chavez's critics to claim that the move to allow RCTV's license to expire amounts to a stifling of dissent in the news media.

"The other channels don't say anything," said Elisa Parejo, 69, an actress who was one of RCTV's first soap opera stars. "What we're living in Venezuela is a monstrosity," she said at RCTV's headquarters on Sunday, as employees gathered for an on-air remembrance of the network's history. "It is a dictatorship."

El Nacional, a daily newspaper here that remains critical of Chavez, greeted readers on Sunday with a front-page editorial set against a blackened background, describing the RCTV decision as "the end of pluralism" in the country.

The Inter-American Press Association joined other nongovernmental groups over the weekend in condemning the government's policies toward RCTV. Gonzalo Marroquin, the president of the association, said in a statement that the RCTV decision was intended to "standardize the right to information, and results in a very bleak outlook for the whole hemisphere."

Angrily reacting to the association's statements, Maria Alejandra Diaz, the social responsibility director at the Communications Ministry, cited recently enacted legislation in Venezuela that enabled the government to shut down media groups for 72 hours if their coverage incited people to engage in violent protests. Diaz asked news organizations to refrain from reporting on the association's statement, since it could allow viewers, readers or listeners to think Chavez's government was "tyrannical."

State television reported that an anti-Chavez protest in front of the offices of Conatel, the regulatory agency that oversees broadcasting licenses, briefly turned violent when protesters threw rocks at the police.

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