Telesur: the Latin American CNN

w-a-a-a-ay back on may 27 (light years ago in blogosphere time), i posted on the new 24/7 latin american news channel, telesur, being set up in caracas as a joint venture of argentina, cuba, uruguay and venezuela... the brainchild of hugo chávez, there was some initial concern that telesur would be a propaganda conduit for chávez... so far, that doesn't seem to be the case...

Telesur has long been feared by the US government as pure Chávez propaganda. Before a single broadcast had aired, the House of Representatives passed legislation to transmit a counter, pro-US television channel into Venezuela, similar to Radio and TV Marti in Cuba.

Despite such fears, based on analysis of the first two weeks of live news programming and a week spent in its studios, Telesur is clearly run by professional journalists striving to provide balanced and independent coverage of Latin America to people who often learn about themselves from US or European-based media. Indeed, there are fewer questions about Telesur's ulterior motives than its ability to attract viewers in a region traditionally distrustful of state-run institutions.

An American journalist, who has written for leading US newspapers, and now works for Telesur, describes his colleagues as "absolutely serious journalists." He adds that, "I have not seen anything indicating that there is any element of propaganda here."

of course, the U.S. could never be accused of broadcasting propaganda...

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