Don't cry for RCTV, Venezuela

Lest anyone should think it's only Fox News and similar bogus US media that carry fake news stories, the BBC seem to be trying to keep up, as part of its mission to broadcast only the news the Blair administration would like to be true.

Just to make things clear:

1) RCTV has not been closed. It hasn't, indeed, closed. Its free-to-air broadcast license has not been renewed, but it is still free to put out its programmes via satellite and cable, as before, with no censorship or other government interference.

2) RCTV is far from being the only independent television station, or the only opposition voice in the Venezuelan media. 80% of Venezuelan radio and television stations are privately owned, and many are frequently critical of the Chavez government. There is no press censorship, and the country's newspapers are almost all privately-owned.

3) RCTV has not lost its license because of its political colour, or because it preferred to show soap operas instead of presidential speeches. It has lost (part of) its license because, during the attempted overthrow of the elected Venezuelan government in April 2002, RCTV sided unashamedly with the plotters. It broadcast lies intended to inflame violence; it broadcast fake news of Chavez's resignation; and it refused to allow its reporters to file any actual news stories which would have exposed those lies. If a British or American TV station had done something similar (perhaps by broadcasting that President Bush had been killed in the 9/11 attacks and blaming the attacks on the Jews), how many Americans would be howling for about free speech if the station suffered subsequent restriction of its license?

The voices complaining about Chavez's unacceptable "authoritarianism" are the same people who moan constantly about the lies and propaganda which al-Jazeera transmits. Yet when faced with an far worse example they just lap up the lies, the incitements to violence, and the hatred. It isn't about freedom: it;s about whether the lies and propaganda are orchestrated by a group it's officially cool to hate (Arabs) or against such a group (South American socialists).

If the EU swallows the officially-promoted lies about RCTV as an excuse this week to discriminate against Venezuela, it will demonstrate yet again the open contempt of the European establishment for elective democracy (already amply shown by its shameful punishment of the Palestinian people for electing the "wrong" government). It will also underline the EU's craven disinclination to do anything not in the best interest of the United States.

Last night, Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain covered Macmillan's humiliation by De Gaulle when he first attempted to join what was then the EEC. De Gaulle was concerned, in part, by the "special relationship" between the UK and USA , distant though it was by comparison with the Blair-Bush cosiness. For De Gaulle it was out of the question that the US should be encouraged to play any significant part in European politics. I never thought I'd say this, but we could do with someone like that now instead of the spineless nonentities of 2007.