Venezuela's free press.(Brief article)

Although Market: Latin America takes great pains to present objective analyses of the status of the world's various market economies, we are occasionally caught, as they say, flat footed. Such was the case with a story we ran in our August 2007 edition (15:8) where the "slant" of the story suggested that freedom of speech in Venezuela was in danger of being compromised. The title of our piece was "An ominous sign from Venezuela."

Recently, we found a story posted on the Huffington Post website, an admittedly "liberal" collection of political commentary, and, according to one source, the fifth most visited blog on the Internet. The story was written by one of the cofounders of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) (Washington), a think tank we respect and trust, and whose information we occasional use here.

The story gave a brief review of press freedom in Venezuela as it focused on the Venezuelan President's recent supposed "shut down" of the country's biggest TV station. The station wasn't shut down. It still reaches over half of Venezuela's consumers. The "event" was widely reported by the international press as another example of threats to "freedom of speech" in Venezuela. Market: Latin America did review, but not report on, the event. But--like the rest of the international press--we were clearly taken in.

The CEPR story said, in part, "Venezuelans can turn on their TV and see extremely harsh criticism of their government every day. They can turn on their radio and find the airwaves actually dominated by anti-government `news' broadcasting."

The facts are the facts, after all, no matter how antiquated a market's economic policies may seem.

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