[New-imc] FWR: in support of the ANMCLA Venezuela IMC proposal

Mon Jul 29 00:35:04 PDT 2002

On Sat, 2002-07-27 at 23:07, Alberto M. Giordano wrote:
> 
> 
> >
> >Al,
> >
> >Maybe you can help Adriana with some of her questions since you're in
> >touch with the people involved.
> >
> 
> 
> Thanks, Michael, for the quick response.
> 
> And hello Adriana.
> 
> I am happy to offer my observations and any information I have, and can 
> answer your questions based on reporting I have already done, but with the 
> proviso that I write from Mexico, and not Venezuela, and I do not speak for 
> any of the organizations there. I am simply speaking as a supporter and 
> participant in the IndyMedia movement.
> 
> By way of brief introduction, I publish the Narco News Bulletin - 
> http://www.narconews.com/ - reporting on the drug war and democracy from 
> Latin America.
> 
> I have lived and worked South of the Border since July 1997, when I spent a 
> year in Chiapas in Zapatista communities. I believe it was 1996 when I met 
> Michael and the folks at Paper Tiger and collaborated with them on the Free 
> the Media conference and Steal This Radio in New York. I have been an active 
> participant in Indymedia, both in Spanish and English language sites, and 
> have collaborated frequently with Indymedia journalists including the 
> Brazilian cartoonist LaTuff, the NYC-IMC collective, Chiapas IndyMedia and 
> others.
> 
> In 1996 I authored "The Medium is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against 
> Media," a document which upset many of my former colleagues in the 
> commercial media (prior to 1996 I was political reporter for the Boston 
> Phoenix, and had published in the Washington Post, American Journalism 
> Review, and scores of "alternative weeklies" and other publications. I 
> ocassionally write for The Nation. I also spent five years hosting a daily 
> AM talk radio show in Massachusetts and was a regular guest host on the ABC 
> TV affiliate there; my years have been spent in print, Internet, TV and 
> radio, including both pirate and commercial radio.
> 
> I returned to New York on five ocassions last year to defend Narco News, the 
> Mexican journalist Mario Menendez and myself from a multi-million dollar 
> lawsuit by Banamex-Citigroup that attempted to shut down our website. NYC 
> IndyMedia was very supportive of our defense, and last summer I participated 
> in its radio webcast about the free speech issues involved with IMC 
> journalist Mike Burke.
> 
> In December 2001 the New York State Supreme Court ruled in our favor and 
> furthermore established, for the first time under U.S. case law, that 
> Internet journalists now have the same First Amendment protections under the 
> Sullivan v. NY Times precedent as commercial broadcast and print media.
> 
> When the court victory occured, I was in Bolivia, reporting on the plight of 
> the coca growers and investigating the assassination of union leader 
> Casimiro Huanca. Given the urgency of the matters in Bolivia, and with 
> dozens of requests for interviews about the court victory in my mailbox, I 
> granted only one of those interviews - with Mike Burke of IMC New York - and 
> sent all other reporters to IMC-NYC to get their story from there. I did 
> that to send a very clear message to the commercial media about whose 
> victory it truly was: that of the independent media networks. There was also 
> a tremendous response from IMC users that are posted below that interview, 
> which appears at:
> 
> http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14874&group=webcast
> 
> This is all in the way of saying that I am, in my daily life, an IndyMedia 
> journalist. Narco News often has worked with IndyMedia Chiapas (on the 
> Zapatista caravan coverage) and utilizes IndyMedia Mexico City for public 
> discussions of our articles. In that city, we are currently setting up a 
> physical space for a weekly "immedia salon" to create an "off-screen" 
> component to authentic journalism.
> 
> So, again, not officially speaking for the Venezuela proponents, but as one 
> who has exhaustively investigated their movement, seen and heard it first 
> hand in Venezuela, I will offer my response to your comments below....
> 
> >>
> >>Hi Michael,
> >>i`m the person who is dealing with the Venezuela aplication. The
> >>situation there is very complex, and they applyed right before the goup
> >>in april. By that time, Douglas who was the contact info, sent us a
> >>strange messages complainig about international support even thought we
> >>worked on a global features.
> 
> I would strongly urge you not to take his complaints personally. His country 
> was going through a coup d'etat and, for various days, a military 
> dictatorship that was raiding many of the 25 Community TV and Radio stations 
> that make up the network that applied through Mr. Aponte for an IndyMedia 
> site. Those very same Indy journalists were being hunted by the 
> dictatorship. One was tortured and arrested.
> 
> During that time, I was extensively reporting on the coup and counter-coup 
> at Narco News. See:
> 
> Three Days that Shook the Media
> 
> http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html
> 
> ...for a detailed blow-by-blow account of those events and the behavior of 
> the commercial media.
> 
> Last month, I went to Venezuela, met and interviewed many of the Community 
> Media journalists. Part I of my resulting series on the Community Media in 
> Venezuela begins this coming Monday on Narco News.
> 
> The 25 TV and radio stations that make up Mr. Aponte's network, all strictly 
> (and by law) non-profit, all strictly (and by law) not partisan and 
> unaffiliated with any political party, and all are strictly (and by law) 
> organized horizontally and democratically with real grassroots neighborhood 
> participation on a scale that truly reaches and involves the masses. No 
> single United States independent media project, to my knowledge, and not my 
> own Narco News which just received its 16 millionth hit yesterday, enjoys 
> this level of popular audience and grassroots participation that these 
> Venezuela Community Media stations have built.
> 
> In other words, this network upon whose behalf Mr. Aponte applied - which 
> goes under the umbrella of Associación Nacional Medios Comunitarios, Libres 
> y Alternativos (ANMCLA) - consisting of 25 Community broadcasters and 
> various websites and newspapers - are, by any independent media standard, 
> the most advanced in any country in this hemisphere and probably on earth. 
> So while I don't personally know Mr. Aponte, although am a big fan of his 
> group's newspaper Proceso, I would strongly urge you to be forgiving about 
> any "strange mail" or complaints he waged during this time of intense 
> pressure in which his network was placed under siege and pursued by soldiers 
> and police on a scale that has not happened in this hemisphere since the 
> 1973 coup in Chile. Furthermore, Mr. Aponte is one player among a great many 
> who are the daily movers and shakers of this painstakingly democratic 
> movement with no paid staff or bureaucracy.
> 
> These 25 radio and TV stations - all in alliance with each other -function 
> much like "pirate" radio stations in the US and elsewhere. Some have been 
> around since the 1970s, and have deep roots in their communities. These 
> stations were legalized by the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution and a 2001 
> telecommunications law set forth the absolute conditions for their 
> existence, again, that they be non-profit, organized democratically from the 
> community, pluralistic, give voice to all comers, and be strictly 
> non-partisan in terms of political parties or religious creeds.
> 
> So, I can answer definitively that this network is horizontally organized 
> and unaffiliated with any political party.
> 
> I think it would be a damn shame if communications problems or a rocky start 
> - particularly in light of the intense persecution and pressures on this 
> network - prevented the larger IndyMedia network from enthusiastically 
> accepting the proposal of this ANMCLA network to host Indymedia Venezuela. 
> The "punk rock" proposal, seems to me, to be apolitical, far less organized, 
> less professional, and far less representative of the masses and the true 
> strength of the Community Media by leaps and bounds.
> 
> To that end, I am fluent in Spanish and would be happy to facilitate or 
> translate communications in any way to expedite this process.
> 
> If you agree not to distribute it until we publish it on Monday, I would be 
> happy to send you an advance text of Part I of our series on the Community 
> Media - this first installment is about the persecution against them by the 
> pro-coup forces and commercial media - which I think would give you a solid 
> idea of the breadth and truly vanguard nature of the work this ANMCLA 
> network is doing down there.
> 
> If there is any opposition at all to this network's application - and with 
> those two questions about political parties and horizontal organization 
> answered, I don't see what other obstacle there could reasonably be -- I 
> would then like the opportunity to address the committee that decides these 
> matters and advocate, as an unaffiliated party, in support of the ANMCLA 
> proposal. You may feel free to forward this communication to anyone involved 
> in the decision-making process. And I am happy to answer - or if I don't 
> have the answer, investigate and find the answer to - any other questions 
> you or anyone would have.
> 
> In sum, I think IndyMedia would make a grave error to reject this original 
> application by the ANMCLA network, as offered by Mr. Aponte.
> 
> To the contrary, I would urge you to strive to make it happen. I feel 
> absolutely certain that neither you nor anyone in the IndyMedia networks 
> would later feel unhappy with that decision. To the contrary, to invite the 
> ANMCLA network to host an IndyMedia Venezuela would be a major coup (ahem, 
> maybe I should find a better term! But you know what I mean!), because, as 
> one who travels and reports throughout this hemisphere, I do not see any 
> other region or country where the Independent Media movement - whatever name 
> or title it uses, and in this case it is ANMCLA - has achieved such a broad 
> base of public support, relevance and impact as these compañeros in this 
> democratic, non-profit and non-partisan network have achieved in Venezuela.
> 
> My series on the broader subject of Independent vs. Commercial Media in 
> Venezuela will be published Monday at this URL:
> 
> http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html
> 
> (That link will go up at Midnight Monday Morning).
> 
> Thank you for your consideration, and please keep me posted about how I can 
> help move the project forward and participate in this process.
> 
> salud y abrazo,
> 
> Al Giordano
> Publisher
> The Narco News Bulletin
> http://www.narconews.com/
> narconews at hotmail.com
> 
> 
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