Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Favoritism in the news, even when reporting tragedy in Venezuela

Yesterday there was a tragic plane crash in the Perija/Machiques area of Venezuela. 160 people died, all passengers being French tourists from Martinique who chartered that plane to go visit Colombia and Panama.

Since the crash was in Venezuela, of course Venezuelan media here the first ones on the spot. But as I found last night, access to the crash site was restricted according, apparently, to how close to Chavez your boss is.

Since it was a French tragedy, I watched last night on cable the French international broadcast of TV5. I was aghast to observe that all long ditance shots where carrying the Globovision logo. However all the wreckage scenes were "exclusives" from VIVE TV, the pro Chavez network founded sometime in 2004. I would be very interested to know how cvome the VIVE crew coudl film the close up it filmed and how come Globovision and RCTV could only show images from afar. There is no morbity here, just a question on how come some media seem to be more equal than others.

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