The Pink Tide: Media Access and Political Power in Latin America

Chapter:
Venezuela: Freedom of Expression, Public Access, and Participatory
Democracy
George Ciccariello-Maher, Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel
University in Philadelphia, having taught previously at San Quentin State Prison and the
Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. He holds a B.A. in Government and Economics
from St. Lawrence University, a B.A. Hons. in Social and Political Sciences from St. John’s
College, University of Cambridge, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from U.C.
Berkeley. His academic work has appeared in Latin American Perspectives, Constellations,
South Atlantic Quarterly, Contemporary Political Theory, Journal of French and
Francophone Philosophy, Qui Parle, Theory & Event, Historical Materialism, and Journal of
Black Studies, with more conjunctural analysis appearing in Salon, The Nation, Monthly
Review, Jacobin, and Counterpunch. He is author of the book We Created Chávez: A
People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution (Duke, 2013), Building the Commune:
Venezuela’s Radical Democracy (Jacobin-Verso, 2016), and Decolonizing Dialectics (Duke,
2016).

E-mail address: gjcm@drexel.edu, Phone: (215)895-1017

Post address:
Department of Politics, Drexel University
3141 Chestnut Street, 3025 MacAlister Hall
Philadelphia PA 19104

Ewa Sapiezynska, Assistant Professor of Sociology at SWPS University of Social Sciences

and Humanities in Poland. Sapiezynska holds a PhD in Media Sociology from Universidad de
Chile. She worked as a researcher and lecturer in social science at various Chilean
universities. She lived in Venezuela between 2006 and 2008 and conducted field research
there also in 2004 and 2005. Coordinator of the panel “Struggles over Mass Media in Latin
America” at the 8th NOLAN Conference (Helsinki, 2015). Her recent publications include:
“The Media and Power in Postliberal Venezuela. The Legacy of Chávez for the Debate on
Freedom of Expression” (Latin American Perspectives, 2016), “El Triunfo de la Libertad
Negativa: Discurso Parlamentario en Chile acerca de la Libertad de Expresión” (Latin
American Research Review, 2016), “Media Freedom Indexes in Democracies: A Critical
Perspective Through the Cases of Poland and Chile” (together with Claudia Lagos,
International Journal of Communication, 2016) and “Venezuela in the international press: a
biased coverage” (together with Fernando Casado Gutiérrez and Rebeca Sánchez, Revista
Latina de Comunicación Social, 2014).

E-mail address: eva.sap@gmail.com, Phone: +48 79 37 73 375

Post address:
Czerniakowska 178 A/42
00-440 Warsaw, Poland

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Abstract

The chapter begins with a brief overview of the debates over the meaning of freedom of
expression and the right to communication and media access that accompanied the formation
of new communication laws and regulations in Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and
Uruguay in the last years. We proceed with an analysis of the Venezuelan case that started the
tide in terms of media access as well. In 2000, Venezuela introduced a new media regulation
that guaranteed media access as a human right and established a new legal media category:
community media. Many new public media were created in the subsequent years as well as
community media which started receiving financial and technical support. Meanwhile, the
main private media outlets began to substitute political parties in their role as an opposition to
the government. They also regularly accused the government of restricting their freedom of
expression. The chapter examines the dialectical relation between the sociopolitical struggles
in Chavez´s Venezuela and the media, arguing that the political polarization visible in the
mediated public sphere under Chávez had been latent for a long time in the form of
systematic exclusion. We combine discourse analysis, analysis of identified critical moments
(media´s role in the coup d’état against Chávez, no prolongation of the RCTV license and the
establishment of teleSUR) and analysis of quantitative data on the media market structure in
Venezuela and its changes under Chávez. We conclude that the concept of freedom of
expression in the chavista discourse refers primarily to freedom of expression as a collective
and positive freedom (in Berlin’s sense) and puts the principle of the “multitude of voices”
over the principle of “no interference” (Lichtenberg, 1990). It also links the concept closely
with the issue of power relations, the intention being to change them through the
redistribution of media access. Venezuelan community media gave a voice to many
previously voiceless and blurred the divide between the publics and the content creators, or
“the scene” in Rousseau’s terms. At the same time, data shows that in terms of audiences the
private oppositional media kept their predominance.

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Freedom of expression and new Latin American media laws

For the last seventeen years we have witnessed an intense debate in Latin America over the
meaning of freedom of expression and press freedom. In these debates, it is clear that freedom
of expression means different things to different people, and therefore operates as an empty
signifier (Laclau, 2005) subject to a constant struggle for its redefinition. Debates on the
freedom of expression in the media are not about how to realize an agreed-upon idea, but
instead they involve a struggle between alternative possible meanings and a dynamic
replenishing of the content of these ideas in accordance with social demands or the
development of a new hegemony, both above from the state and from social movements
below.

The emergence of new communication laws and regulations in Venezuela, Argentina,

Ecuador, Bolivia and Uruguay, and the discussions surrounding them, have played a part in
this struggle, both consolidating hegemony from above and clearing the way for participatory
media production from below. These laws all introduce regulations against media
concentration, and most of them also establish three distinct parts of the media spectrum that
are reserved for public, community and private media outlets, respectively. In this way, the
new laws serve to determine the parameters of public debate and delimit media access for
those previously barred from it.

The Venezuelan media law, dating from 2000, was the first new bill of the tide and we will
analyze it more in detail in the next section. The Argentine media bill, chronologically the
second one, was finally approved in 2009 after many years of participatory consultations and
in the middle of a conflict with the biggest media group in the country, Clarín. The law was
praised by Frank La Rue (2012), in his capacity of United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Freedom of Expression, as a “model for Latin America and the world”. In his analysis of this
legislation he stressed that excessive media concentration was “threatening democracy” and
that the existence of private media is not sufficient to guarantee freedom of expression as a
universal right: “there need to be community media […] and the public media have to be
defended as a nonprofit space.”

The 2011 Bolivian telecommunication law specifies that one third of the media spectrum be
reserved for community media, and indicates that half of the community media spectrum
should be dedicated to social and community-based groups, and the other half for peasant and
indigenous groups. In 2013 a new communication law went into effect in Ecuador,
guaranteeing 33% of broadcast frequencies pertain to public media and 34% to indigenous
groups, with the remaining 33% for private media.

The 2014 antimonopoly media law in Uruguay—approved with strong support from civil
society organizations—states that media concentration damages the democratic system by not
allowing a plurality of voices. The president of the country at the moment of the approval of
the bill, José Mujica (2014) defended the law saying: “Some people think that to regulate
anything is a mortal sin but I think exactly the reverse. If we don’t regulate here, these foreign
sharks, these privileged families, will end up devouring us”.

It is highly symbolic that the 2009 Argentinian media law was one of the first bills changed
by decree by the new right-wing president Mauricio Macri after his 2015 electoral victory.
The changes introduced by Macri make it easier to establish large media conglomerates by
bringing together several radio and TV outlets. According to Argentinian daily Página 12, the
goal of Macri’s decree is to ensure “that the media stays in few hands” (Pertot, 2016). The
immediacy of Macri’s decree is a clear testament to the fact that the struggle over what the
empty signifier “freedom of expression” means is still very much alive.

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Whereas Macri and others on the right seek to equate press freedom with government non-
intervention in the media sphere, the Latin American left – as these laws make clear – tends to
link this empty signifier to the notion of universal media access, the mediated public sphere,
and the “redistribution” of the mediated word. In doing so, the definition encompasses the
human right to communication as conceptualized by Jean d’Arcy (1969): “The time will
come when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will have to encompass a more
extensive right than man's right to information, first laid down 21 years ago in Article 19.
This is the right of man to communicate.” The concept was further popularized by the
UNESCO report “Many voices, one world” (McBride, 1980) that advocated for active citizen
participation in media communication and criticized media concentration.

This definition locates press freedom within the domain of positive freedom – “freedom to”,
liberty to self-determination and self-realization (Berlin, 1964) – and emphasizes its collective
dimension, the freedom of different social groups to express themselves in the media. This in
contrast to the classical liberal definition of freedom of expression that builds on its negative
dimension - “freedom from”, liberty from any barriers and interference (Berlin, 1964) – and
focuses primarily on its individual aspect, arguing that the individual liberty can only thrive
by limiting the state’s activities.

The redefinition of freedom of expression by the left is supported by arguments about the
limitations of the liberal tradition. Locating press freedom in the negative and individual
realm reduces the very potential of the concept of freedom (Galcerán Huget, 2009). The
conceptual criticism of the classical liberal definition is well-expressed as follows: “By over-
interpreting legal rights and focusing solely on individual expression at the expense of issues
of property and power, the freedom and agency of individual citizens is inflated. (…) At stake
is the ability (or current inability) to have a robust, pragmatic conversation about speech
rights” (Petersen, 2007: 390-391).

Latin American debates and the new media laws they have produced emphasize precisely
these issues: property and power. The limits to freedom of expression imposed by the market
are actually one of the central concerns of the new Latin American media laws, as it is in the
branch of media studies known as the Political Economy of the Media. According to a classic
text of this tradition (Murdock and Golding, 1977:37):

“[…] the underlying logic of cost operates systematically, consolidating the position
of groups already established in the main mass-media markets and excluding those
groups who lack the capital base required for successful entry. Thus the voices which
survive will largely belong to those least likely to criticize the prevailing distribution
of wealth and power. Conversely, those most likely to challenge these arrangements
are unable to publicize their dissent or opposition because they cannot command
resources needed for effective communication to a broad audience.”

Consequently, the other antagonism behind the struggle over the empty signifier´s meaning is
constituted by the two basic principles that the theory of freedom of expression rests upon:
noninterference (absence of censorship) and multiplicity of voices (Lichtenberg, 1990). The
current debate in Latin America is an example of the collision between these two principles
State intervention may violate the noninterference rule while trying to implement the second
principle and secure media access of groups previously voiceless. And to the contrary,
prioritizing the principle of noninterference is likely to leave many already disempowered
groups voiceless. The link between freedom of expression - understood as the universal right
to communication - and the concept of participatory democracy thus becomes clear within the
chain of signifiers connected with press freedom. The access to communication of all the
social groups is a precondition for a participatory democracy.

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Rousseau, often seen as the father of the concept of participatory democracy, referred in his
writings to ancient festivals where there was no clear division between the actors and the
public so that “everybody could be seen by everybody” (Taylor, 1994) and participate
actively in the spectacle. Such universal “visibility” and participation are essential to being a
citizen. As Jesús Martín-Barbero explains (2001: 51): “Today’s citizenry is characterized by
the ‘reciprocal recognition’—the right to inform and be informed, to speak and be heard—
that is essential to participation in decisions concerning the community. One of the most
flagrant forms of citizen exclusion is precisely dispossession of the right to be seen and
heard.”

The right to communication - Venezuela turns the tide

Even before the new communication law was approved in 2000, Venezuela had established
the right to communication in the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution, the first legal milestone of
Hugo Chávez era. The article 57 of the Constitution guarantees the right to freely express
oneself and article 58 enshrines the right to “free and plural communication”.

The organic law on telecommunications adopted in 20001—as early as during the second year
of Chávez government—goes further and article 12 of the law grants universal access to
communication as a human right. As a result, the chavista concept of freedom of expression
can find an anchor in the writings of d’Arcy (1969): “The concept of the right to
communicate can, here and now, provide a new psychological impetus, throw a fresh light on
existing structures and enable different objectives to be put forward. These are the tasks
which must be accomplished in the coming years, in order that one day we shall be able to
achieve this new right, which we know will not replace existing communication freedoms but
rather embrace them all.”

The 2000 law also establishes for the first time the division of the media spectrum – that other
Latin American laws discussed above would later on develop in a more systematic way –
recognizing three types of media: state, private, and community. The principle of a
multiplicity of voices, with the state as its guardian, therefore gains a clear priority over the
non-interference principle (Lichtenberg, 1990). Nonetheless, while the Venezuelan
communication law stresses the importance of community media in several articles (2, 12, 71,
158 and 200), article 71 leaves it up to the National Communication Commission to introduce
a reserved percentage of frequencies and licenses for the community media, the law itself
does not establish any slots.

In fact, it is a stated objective of the law “[to] promote and assist the exercise of the universal
right to establish open, public and nonprofit community radio and TV media outlets, with the
aim of exercising the right to free and plural communication” (art. 2). Article 12 stresses the
collective dimension of the right to communication alongside the individual dimension and
recognizes that to exercise this right the citizens need to “enjoy appropriate conditions to be
able to found nonprofit community media”. As a result, the article 158 opens the way for tax
exemptions for such nonprofit media, since there can be no real enjoyment of political and
civil rights with the present economic barriers. In practice, the public financing of community
media in Venezuela is not normally direct, but the state does provides technical support,
access to equipment, as well as capacity building opportunities (Sapiezynska, 2016).

Meanwhile, the Law of Social Responsibility on Radio and Television -adopted in 2004 and
known as Ley RESORTE2 dedicates its chapter four to “Democratization and Participation”.

1
www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/es/ve/ve054es.pdf
2 www.leyresorte.gob.ve/ley-resorte/

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This framework gave a great incentive to the national audiovisual production, requiring all the
TV and radio channels to broadcast a minimum of seven hours of programs produced in
Venezuela, including a minimum of four hours of “independent national productions” (art.
14). It also established a minimum of cultural and educational programs to be broadcast per
day (ob. cit.) The law was fiercely criticized for imposing obligations on the public and
private broadcasters alike, but it does promote freedom of expression as a positive liberty by
ensuring media responsibility and requiring even private media outlets to contribute to the
public good.

Media market structure

Comparing the media landscape towards the end of Chávez era with that of 1998, we see a
dramatic expansion of both state-run public and community media outlets. The number of
public radio stations increased from 11 to 83 and public TV added 5 more channels.
Interestingly, however, the number of private radio stations also increased during the same
period (from 331 to 449) and that of private TV channels rose from 36 to 67 (CONATEL,
2012). So the overall situation is one of a significant expansion of media diversity. The
picture is still not very telling though unless we analyze the respective audience share and
press circulation that these outlets enjoy.

Once we do so, we see that that the commercial private TV channels still enjoy clear
dominance over the public and community ones. Data from the 2000–2010 period shows that
state television registered just a 5.4 percent television audience share, including the audience
for the new public channel TVes and the community channel Catia TVe (see below), while
private channels, the majority identified with the opposition, claim the remaining 94.6 percent
of the audience (Weisbrot and Ruttenberg, 2010). This research not only disproves common
claims about censorship and chavista control of the airwaves, but also shows that many
Chávez supporters also watch private channels, making the relationship between political
views and media preference far more fluid than some analyses have suggested.

The Chávez government never enjoyed hegemony over print media either: during his 14 years
in power there were only two pro-governmental national dailies altogether - Vea and, only
later, Correo de Orinoco. In addition, one newspaper - Últimas Noticias - includes different
voices, both from the opposition and Chávez supporters. The rest of the newspapers though,
among them the most prestigious political dailies, El Nacional and El Universal, and many
more, such as Tal Cual and El Nuevo País, have been openly critical of the government
(Sapiezynska, 2016). 10 years after Chávez came to power, the four largest newspapers, none
of them pro-government, claimed 86 percent of circulation (Becerra and Mastrini, 2009).

Mediated public sphere - polarization versus exclusion

Audience fluidity aside, there’s no denying that the Venezuelan media landscape has become
more sharply polarized during Chávez’s years in power, and this polarization of the media has
been part and parcel of a broader process of social polarization. Opposition media has become
more intransigent in its denunciations of a so-called “dictatorship,” while the Chávez
government responded by attempting to consolidate hegemony in the state-run media while
empowering grassroots community media from below.

But prevalent critiques of polarization notwithstanding (e.g. Medina and López Maya, 2003),
the increasing division and conflict cutting across Venezuelan society was not created by
Chavismo, and nor has it been an entirely bad thing. Instead, what is often called
“polarization” is more accurately the revelation and realization of pre-existing divisions. In
the words of Gregory Wilpert (2003a: 104): “Chávez has been less a catalyst than a product
of the ever-deepening class divisions that have marked Venezuela.” Rather than becoming

6
divided, Venezuelan society has long been divided according to socio-economic class and
structures of racial exclusion, and the same goes for Venezuelan media.

Rather than yield an unending cycle of reactionary conflict, polarization in Venezuela has
instead more often denoted the process whereby previously excluded actors have been able to
enter the social and political life of the nation. In the terms of the Argentine-Mexican
philosopher of liberation, Enrique Dussel (2008), Venezuelan struggles have not only
ruptured and divided the social “totality,” but have served to open that totality up to the
inclusion of what Dussel terms “exteriority.”

If in political terms, this has meant “cracking the demos,” creating a more inclusive polity
(Ciccariello-Maher, 2016b), in the media sphere it has meant breaking the traditional
hegemony of the private media outlets, themselves the domain of some of Venezuela’s most
powerful families. Where the Venezuelan media traditionally excluded the poorer and darker
skinned, the politicization of the media by both the state and community media has seen shift
toward greater inclusion and the positive valorization of Afro and Indigenous Venezuelan
peoples and cultures (Ishibashi, 2003; 2007).

This process of opening the mediated public sphere to those previously excluded has passed
through moments of heightened conflict—in particular, the brief 2002 coup d’état against
Chávez and the Constitution and the 2007 clash over the right of Radio Caracas Televisión
(RCTV) to the public airwaves. If the first showed the danger of an increasingly politicized
private media, the second pointed toward a government media strategy geared toward
counterbalancing the predominance of the private media with state-run media (including the
transnational teleSUR) and grassroots community media.

2002: private media on the offensive

The private media were not mere handmaidens of the political forces that briefly ousted
Chávez in April 2002: they were those forces. In the words of Daniel Hellinger (2005: 17):
“with the complete collapse of the old parties, the media themselves became the most
institutionalized force of opposition. Not merely biased, they actively organized efforts to
oust Chávez via coup, work stoppages, and recall. Certainly, such a prejudiced information
system is incompatible with the basic principle of democracy even in its weak pluralist form.”

Private media outlets did more than simply exhort the population to take to the streets and
oust Chávez, they played an even more direct role (Britto, 2006; Lupien, 2013). When several
civilians were killed by still-unidentified snipers, the opposition media inserted images of
armed Chávez supporters firing from Llaguno Bridge into a voiced-over narrative accusing
government supporters of being responsible for the deaths. In fact, the streets below the
bridge were empty, and the chavistas were instead defending themselves from the snipers
(Bartley and Ó Briain, 2003), but this media narrative was the key to setting the coup into
motion.

On the morning after the coup, its military conspirators even took to the airwaves to thank
“all of the private media” for making the coup possible, even describing opposition outlets as
their “most powerful weapon” (it was later revealed that the statement by generals leading the
coup was filmed at the home of a leading television personality) (Ciccariello-Maher, 2013:
168). While opposition private media celebrated the coup, the military shut down the state-
run Venezolana de Televisión, preventing the legitimately elected Chávez government from
broadcasting to the population and making it clear that it was not simply a question of seizing
the barracks or the palace, but of seizing the airwaves as well.

In the context of this media blackout, the community and grassroots media took on the task of

7
informing the general public that a coup had taken place and that Chávez had not in fact
resigned. Grassroots organizers blanketed the barrios with flyers and spray-painted messages
urging the poor to mobilize and demand the government be reinstated (it was out of these
grassroots media efforts that the popular news website Aporrea.org was born). Meanwhile,
those community media outlets that had enjoyed the support of the Chávez government, were
directly attacked by the military and the police during the coup.

State media: TVes and teleSUR

Private media, state media, and community media were all at the very center of the
information struggles that played out during the coup, but when the coup was reversed by the
mobilization of hundreds of thousands in the streets, the media struggle was far from over,
domestically or internationally. In 2005, teleSUR was launched as a public international
channel fulfilling James Curran’s (2002: x) call for “public service broadcasting [to] break
free from its one-nation legacy,” and reviving the international debate about the collective
right to free expression, independence from the dominant international media, and the
importance of public broadcasting.

While Venezuela took a clear initiative in establishing teleSUR, the channel is co-financed by
Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Uruguay and sponsored by the Union of
South American Nations (UNASUR). The channel has an explicit commitment to regional
integration, drawing Latin America together through the media as other institutions have done
politically and economically. TeleSUR has been responsible for the declining influence of
U.S.-based channels, since it offers for the first time direct communication in the south, so
that viewers do not have to watch CNN or Univisión to know what is happening in the
neighboring country.

TeleSUR promotes mutual visibility and the collective right to free expression—the right of
groups and individuals to see themselves as part of the great Latin American community,
alluding on its website to the central notion of the McBride report, the new global order of
information and communication: “We are a space and a voice for the construction of a new
communicational order.” Therefore the channel seeks to revive the 1970s debates in
UNESCO and the nonaligned countries about the right to communication, the concentration
of media in a few hands, and the dependency of the countries of the South on news agencies
and audiovisual production from the North.

Exemplifying these issues, in 2009 it transmitted the coup in Honduras live and interviewed
President Zelaya on the plane on which he was attempting to return to the country a week
later. Various other channels, among them CNN, rebroadcast this dramatic interview. In fact,
after the coup and until Zelaya’s arrest by the Honduran police, the teleSUR team was the
only one showing live what was happening in the streets of the country’s capital: the crowds
demanding the return of President Zelaya and a halt to the brutal police repression.

Domestically, when the Chávez government refused to renew the public broadcast concession
for opposition mouthpiece RCTV in December 2006, it was no coincidence that the outlet had
vociferously supported the coup, along with violating many elements of the 2004 Media
Responsibility Law (Ley RESORTE). Despite the fact that RCTV was not “shut down,” but
instead excluded from its privileged access to the public airwaves (continuing to broadcast by
cable and satellite), and despite the fact that the widespread critique of the move attests to the
existence of flourishing press freedom in Venezuela, early 2007 would see a renewed conflict
in the streets and debates about the media question, largely played out by students on both
sides of the political divide.

While opposition students presented the non-renewal as a cut-and-dry violation of press

8
freedom—a view widely echoed in the international press—chavista students tended to
emphasize the question of the airwaves as a scarce public good. In this view, RCTV had for
many decades used a public resource to accrue private profit, and so in the words of one
student leader, this was not a question of “libertad de prensa” (press freedom) but of “libertad
de empresa” (the freedom of private businesses) (Ciccariello-Maher, 2013: 119).

The broadcast license that was not extended to RCTV in December 2006 was transferred to
one of the new public channels, whose name, TVes, “You see yourself,” plays with the idea
of being reflected, having social visibility (as in Rousseau) as central for the citizenry. The
government used this change to emphasize the function of the public media in terms of social
inclusiveness and its intention to give the state an active role in ensuring pluralism. In the
great national debate over the case of RCTV and the establishment of TVes, the community
media were invited to the ministerial planning sessions on new public channel programming
(Schiller, 2013). But lingering grassroots frustration with TVes points to a persistent tension
between state and community media production.

Community media beyond the state

As the Venezuelan government continued to develop communicational hegemony both

domestically (TVes) and internationally (TeleSUR), grassroots media activists have continued
to press the institutions, transforming legal categories so that community truly means
community. Before Chávez came to power, community media—like grassroots organizations
more broadly—were frequently victims of persecution and repression by the authorities.
“Homes and offices that housed community radio stations were regularly raided and their
operators often had to fear for their lives. Running a community radio or television station
was a truly clandestine activity” (Wilpert, 2003b). That is one of the reasons that grassroots
media activists were drawn to support Chávez and the Bolivarian process.

After the organic law on telecommunications was passed in 2000 and – even more
dynamically—in the aftermath of the failed 2002 coup that saw a momentary return to
repressive conditions of the past, the number of community based media outlets literally
exploded. The government saw that they had played an important role during informing the
public about resistance to the coup, especially in the temporary absence of public media
outlets seized by coup plotters. As a result, the process of handing out legal permits to operate
to community media was sped up in 2002 (Wilpert, 2003b). Soon community media outlets
started to form broad-based coalitions, such as the Asociacioón Nacional de Medios
Comunitarios, Libres y Alternativos (ANMCLA) (Fernandes, 2010). In 2013 Venezuela had
252 concessional community radio stations, 41 community television channels, and 104
community newspapers (CONATEL, 2013).

There are several conditions a station has to satisfy to qualify as community media outlet. The
key ones being that at least two thirds of the programming has to be developed by the
community and that the media outlet has to organize audiovisual production workshops for
community members (Wilpert, 2003b). These rules displace the traditional sharp division
between the public and the media producers, coming close to Rousseau’s ideal of universal
visibility and participation. One well-known community TV station in a radical zone of
western Caracas called Catia TVe (Catia Sees You) propagates this idea through the slogan:
“Don’t watch television, make it!” In an attempt to make these words a reality, Catia TVe
trained more than one thousand people at audiovisual production workshops during the first
nine years of the station’s existence (Rangel Hill, 2010).

However, as both the history of the 2002 coup and the non-renewal of RCTV demonstrate,
the question of access to information and the means of producing the media has consistently
exceeded the realm of the state and public media strictly speaking. If grassroots community
media emerged suddenly to confront the “media war” so central to the coup, community

9
media producers were among the first to insist that RCTV lose its privileged access to the
public airwaves, but also that its replacement, TVes, truly reflect the demands of the
grassroots community media sector and serve the needs of local communities.

The participatory promise of TVes was only partially fulfilled, however, and many
community media activists and chavistas more generally were frustrated and disenchanted to
see the new public channel broadcasting foreign movies and other content more characteristic
of the mainstream private media. While such content reflects the fluidity of chavista
viewers—who often prefer private televisions stations—this disenchantment points directly
toward a productive tension in which many grassroots community media activists have
pushed beyond the state and merely public media. Instead, many demand that the media be
neither private nor state-run, but produced by and for the communities themselves.

Catia TVe is a good example, and Naomi Schiller (2017) has documented the tensions and
contradictions of the station’s efforts to expand community media production in Caracas. The
activists centered around Catia TVe, arguably the country’s most important experiment in
community broadcasting, have consistently struggled both with and against the state,
negotiation an autonomous space for participatory media that was distinct from state media,
but has consistently preserved a dialectical relationship with it.

Similarly, as Venezuela’s broader participatory project has turned in recent years toward the
establishment of what are called communes—local institutions of directly democratic
decision-making and production—so too have grassroots media outlets sought a communal
approach. For example, while the Ataroa Commune in Barquisimeto was home to the
community television station Lara TV, many activists were frustrated that the broadcaster
pertained to the community in name only, “and instead operated more like a family business.”
Eventually, commune activists seized the station for the community, and have since
spearheaded efforts to transform legal categories so that community media actually functions
as such (Ciccariello-Maher, 2016a: 98).

Conclusions

“Freedom of expression” is central to chavista interpretations of the role of the media, but
rather than denoting a simply negative freedom, it instead functions as empty signifier that is
constantly being redefined as a collective and positive freedom (in Berlin’s sense). This
redefinition places the principle of the “multitude of voices” over the principle of “no
interference” (Lichtenberg, 1990). It also links the concept of free expression closely with the
issue of power relations, the intention being to change them through the redistribution of
media access, the “redistribution of the word”.

By understanding the relationship between state and community media in Venezuela, we can
see how the Bolivarian process has given voice to many previously voiceless and blurred the
divide between publics and content creators, or “the scene” in Rousseau’s terms. The
polarization of the media—like the polarization of the broader society—helped in the end to
overcome systematic exclusion of the poor and racialized from the Venezuelan media, and set
the stage for a dramatic expansion of grassroots, community media outlets.

Today, community media is thriving with the support of the government while also
simultaneously demanding that the media be more than simply public. Beyond the state,
many grassroots activists are demanding direct and democratic community control and self-
managed media production that reflects while consolidating the identity of the people
themselves. At the same time, data shows that in terms of audiences the private oppositional
media kept their predominance—even among many chavista voters—simultaneously
disproving the frequent claims that Venezuela lacks press freedom while pointing toward the

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long cultural struggle that lay ahead.

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