Google Challenge of the Day

Step one, Venezuela: plug in the word 'RCTV' into Google news and see how many responses you get. I tried it just now from the 'Google News Venezuela' page and got 4,323 returns about how last week the Venezuelan RCTV cable TV station has been pulled off the air (by the cable operators and not the government itself, apparently) because it wouldn't show the 'cadena nacional' Hugo segments.

Step two Peru: plug in the word 'Yurimaguas' in Google news and see how many responses you get. I tried it just now from the 'Google News Peru' page and got 75 returns, but only 26 stories about how last week the Peruvian Canal 8 de Radio Televisión de Oriente en Yurimaguas TV station has been pulled off the air (by government itself and via full licence revokal for technical reasons....something about not upgrading to new equipment, true for 95% of all Peru TV stations) but is really about the dissent towards Twobreakfasts' APRA shown by this station deep in the heart of the Amazon region of the country.

And hey, that's just with the Spanish language news services. When it comes to using Google News in the English language, the RCTV story gets 4,371 hits (up to now..more to come for sure) and the Yurimaguas story gets 2 (yes, two).

I wonder why?

UPDATE: Extra info on RCTV coming thru via Utpal in the comments section:

Btw, it's not just the cadena nacional, it's the whole shabang "Ley Resorte" thing (playing the national anthem, observing supervised hours etc etc). RCTV had avoided being subject to the social responsibility law by claiming to be "international", but CONATEL determined recently that it's programming was, like 90% Venezuelan, so it made no sense to claim that is wasn't "national".

I suspect they are gonna be back soon.

Media bias? What media bias!

A must-read post over at Plan Colombia and Beyond (a blog that should win awards it's so damn good at its subject) about how the US censors stories and only allows "good news" stories from countries deemed 'US friendly' and "bad news" stories from countries with a bad relationship with TheWorldPoliceOfficer™

Shocked! Ah Wuz Shocked Ah Say!

PCAB quotes from this Washington Times report that's a fine piece of journalism. What a refreshing change to say that about Moon Daily. Here's an extract:

U.S. embassies are discouraging or suppressing negative reports to Washington about U.S. allies, sometimes depriving officials of information they need to make good policy decisions, current and former diplomats say.

One diplomat told The Washington Times that he has decided to resign in part because of frustration with “rampant self-censorship” by Foreign Service officers and their superiors that has gone so far as to ban “bad news” cables from countries that are friendly with the United States. …

Current and former Foreign Service officers said the censorship reached a peak during the Bush administration. They attributed its continuation to a risk-averse institutional culture.

“Even in highly classified cables, people in the [Foreign Service] are very careful not to speak negatively about their host country,” said the diplomat, who is resigning after three overseas assignments. …

The resigning officer said that, during one of his tours, his ambassador, a political appointee of President Bush, “flat out banned any ‘bad-news’ cables, and made it known at all levels that we were only to produce ‘good-news stories’ about our [host] country,” a U.S. ally.

The officer said he had written “several cables critical of senior leaders” in his host country and about “interference by the government in the electoral process,” but many of them “were either quashed or radically altered.”

On the other hand, he said, negative cables are common regarding countries with strained relations with Washington, such as Burma, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

Solidarity with Censored Blog 'Que Te Pasa Clarín'

News from Argentina is not good for freedom of speech. The blog 'Que Te Pasa Clarín' (QTPC), set up by an ex-employee of the country's largest media group, has been gagged by court order after Clarín applied for an injunction against its publication. Right now all you see if you go to the QTPC front page is a "sorry, we've been taken off the air" message from the blog authors.

It's worth pointing out at this point the Clarín is Anti-Kirchner and the blogger behind QTPC is highly critical of the newspaper and its editorial line. Also, from when the blog kicked off in early April to today it has been severely critical of Clarín and often publishing embarrassing secrets that Clarín simply didn't want out in the public field. You can still access all 140 posts at QTPC at this Google search link, but instead of going to the page you need to click the 'CACHED' button of each entry. Those of you who do Spanish can find out all the juicy details that the shits at Clarín wanted to suppress.

IKN voices its total support for the blog QTPC and roundly condemns the bullyboy actions of Grupo Clarín, an enormous, monopolistic, publicly quoted media company (GCLA on the London Stock Exchange) that would be the first to scream blue murder if it were the object of press restrictions itself.


UPDATE: The story I linked to above on the first link ("been gagged by court order") was a specific report in Argentina's 'Critica' daily, but now it seems the story has been pulled and the linkgoes to the website's home page...no report anywhere on the site. Looks like Clarin has managed to gag its rival, too. Wowsers, what fascists! Here's a report on the closure from a site in Spain.

Freedom of the Press, USA style

And so we get the latest installment of the "Freedom House" (I mean, you're just asking for trouble with a name like that) Annual Media Study. So let's not dwell on the boring stuff (I mean, why does Iceland always manage to top every one of these "life quality" type polls? And why is it the worst affected country by the financial crisis? And are these two facts related?) because I know that all you care about is Latin America and how we got on down here. So here's the necessary chart, again colour-coded for your dee lek tay shun.

Four countries are deemed by William Taft and friends to have free press down here. Thanks Bill.

1) Costa Rica. Reason: Those dudes are so relaxed they can't be bothered to complain about anything.

2) Uruguay. Reason: Cows outnumber people 100 to 1. Four times as many people live in Buenos Aires as the whole of Uruguay and you want controversy and drama? Go drink a medio/medio.

3) Chile.Reason: Press is deemed free because when media bosses share cocktail receptions /holiday homes / lovers with gov't ministers, the journalists who work for them aren't stupid enough to question anything done by the administrations.

4) Guyana. Reason: Not a clue. Not only that but Guyana climbed out the yellow zone this year.

Anyway, congrats to the above greenies, I suppose. Then we have a whole bunch of states in the yellow, "partly free" zone. We got Bolivia up quite high (cos Santa Cruz papers tell the locals what they want to know, same with La Paz papers), we got Peru kinda middling (despite editors sacked by owners because they had the guts to point out rampant APRA corruption) and we have Argentina scoring quite low (mainly due to the ongoing spat between The Kirchners and Grupo Clarín) and a host of other mediocre scores for their own reasons.

Really, the yellow zone is where all of LatAm belongs, as the general LatAm saga of corrupt business&media pushes against corrupt government and then corrupt gov't pushes back (lather, rinse, repeat), but that just wouldn't be controversial enough, would it now? Because we gotta have

Venezuela in the red zone!

Despite letting media channels operate for five whole years after playing a key role in the failed coup d'etat, and despite reading rabid anti-Chavez headlines every single day in the most popular of dailies (without any editors getting booted or arrested, natch), Freedom House decides that Venezuela has a "Not Free" press and puts it in the same bunch as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Palestine and Israel.

Phun Phactoid: The director of Freedom House was for many many moons a bigwig at USAID. Almost certainly unrelated to the argument...not.