Saturday, March 26, 2005
Venezuela Channel Gives CNN Competition
Source: Washington Post Loose computer cables, laptops and a video camera fill a cramped hotel room where a team of journalists is laying the groundwork for a new satellite television station that they say will be Latin America's alternative to CNN.
With financial backing from Venezuela's government, Telesur is scheduled to begin transmitting by satellite 24 hours a day within three or four months, offering news and opinion shows from a decidedly South American perspective.
"Telesur's reason for being is the need to see Latin America with Latin American eyes," director Aram Aharonian said Friday while taking a short break from his work planning programs and hiring staff.
"It's our right to have our own vision of what happens in Latin America, and not what Europeans or Americans, or whoever, tell us about how we are, who we are," said Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan who has worked for years as a print journalist.
His government is putting about $2.5 million into startup costs with support from Argentina and Uruguay, and the channel has an agreement to share material with the state-run TV Brasil, Aharonian said.
For the moment, about 20 employees work in three makeshift offices while construction workers put up walls and wiring for studios in a long-abandoned government building in Caracas.
"We aren't going to compete with CNN. We're simply going to give the public its own information alternative," he said. "This is the first time that we're going to be able to see ourselves through our own eyes."
# posted by ATN @ 11:17 AM 
