Frost Bank
Free Means Free
RECEIVED Mon., June 11, 2007
Hey Louis,
Excellent Free Means Free article last week [“Page Two,” June 8] condemning Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “nonrenewing” the broadcast license of RCTV in Caracas.
Yes, AMARC did issue a statement opposing the shutdown of RCTV, which I passed along to the Chronicle in my capacity as the vice president for the international board of the Canadian NGO, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (www.amarc.org).
AMARC opposes all forms of censorship. Be it the nonrenewal of a vitriolic, even dangerous, media outlet bent on undermining a seated government, or, and speaking of the word “free;” the threatening to throw programmers off the radio because a representative of an Austin environmental group actually dared to utter the word “free!” over the Austin airwaves, as was the case with Ken McKenzie on the Green Show on KOOP Radio recently.
I have been advising folks who want to learn more about RCTV and its underhanded role, to say the least, in the 2002 failed coup attempt, to acquire a copy of the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (www.chavezthefilm.com/index_ex.htm) which you reminded me had its debut at a SXSW Film Fest a few years back.
But even that film is now caught up in controversy. There is an online petition (www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?Recivex&5801) urging folks not to show the film!
I am here in Vancouver, home of legendary Co-op Radio (www.coopradio.org) at the NCRC, National Campus and Community Radio Conference, the biggest community radio event on the continent, talking about KOOP Radio, RCTV, and other media debacles (www.citr.ca/conference).
Yeah. Louis, I too find myself getting ill listening to much of the liberal rhetoric surrounding community media, be it from Caracas, Venezuela, or there in Austin.
Excellent Free Means Free article last week [“Page Two,” June 8] condemning Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “nonrenewing” the broadcast license of RCTV in Caracas.
Yes, AMARC did issue a statement opposing the shutdown of RCTV, which I passed along to the Chronicle in my capacity as the vice president for the international board of the Canadian NGO, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (www.amarc.org).
AMARC opposes all forms of censorship. Be it the nonrenewal of a vitriolic, even dangerous, media outlet bent on undermining a seated government, or, and speaking of the word “free;” the threatening to throw programmers off the radio because a representative of an Austin environmental group actually dared to utter the word “free!” over the Austin airwaves, as was the case with Ken McKenzie on the Green Show on KOOP Radio recently.
I have been advising folks who want to learn more about RCTV and its underhanded role, to say the least, in the 2002 failed coup attempt, to acquire a copy of the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (www.chavezthefilm.com/index_ex.htm) which you reminded me had its debut at a SXSW Film Fest a few years back.
But even that film is now caught up in controversy. There is an online petition (www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?Recivex&5801) urging folks not to show the film!
I am here in Vancouver, home of legendary Co-op Radio (www.coopradio.org) at the NCRC, National Campus and Community Radio Conference, the biggest community radio event on the continent, talking about KOOP Radio, RCTV, and other media debacles (www.citr.ca/conference).
Yeah. Louis, I too find myself getting ill listening to much of the liberal rhetoric surrounding community media, be it from Caracas, Venezuela, or there in Austin.
Cheers,
Jim Ellinger
Vancouver, BC
Jim Ellinger
Vancouver, BC
