Attempts to voice antiwar sentiment
despite media, gov’t
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Independent Mexican station
defeats broadcast giant

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan. 29 (IPS)-- One of Mexico’s few independent television stations, whose installations were taken over in December by armed men acting on the orders of the powerful TV Azteca network, went back on the air this week after a legal process that cast doubt on the government’s impartiality.

Corporación de Noticias e Información (CNI), the small firm that runs the programming of the private Televisión del Valle de México (TVM), began broadcasting again Monday night, one month after its frequency was seized by force.

CNI, which since 1994 has operated Channel 40 on a government concession of a frequency that by law belongs to the state, provides news coverage that is frequently critical of the government, as well as alternative, novel programming.

Security employees of TV Azteca, one of Mexico’s largest networks, stormed the CNI/TVM transmission tower in the capital on Dec. 27 on the argument that an international arbitration panel had ruled in its favor on a debt that it was owed by Channel 40.

A judge classified the incident, in which hooded armed men burst into the building, threatened several workers, and took over the transmission facilities, as a criminal act. Nevertheless, TV Azteca broadcast its own programming from the transmission tower until Jan. 9.

The government of Vicente Fox then decided to take over the broadcast facility until the two parties resolved their protracted legal battle.

Legislators, including members of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), academics in the field of communication, and columnists writing in Mexico’s leading newspapers criticized the stance taken by the government and demanded that the frequency be returned to Channel 40, which had been granted the concession.

They also called on authorities to condemn TV Azteca for taking over a transmission facility by force. But there was no official response to their complaints.

Upset with the government’s intervention in the case, CNI took legal action. In the end, a judge ruled in its favor, and ordered that the transmission tower be restored to its legitimate owner.

“In this case, the federal government has betrayed its role as a guarantor of the law, and through omissions and actions, it has backed one of the parties, TV Azteca, involved in a dispute in the courts” over a debt, wrote columnist Miguel Granados in the daily newspaper Reforma.

He argued that the stance taken by the government had cast its independence, as well as its respect for freedom of expression, into doubt.

Fox’s wife, Martha Sahagún, has been carrying out a charity campaign for indigenous children through TV Azteca, and the network’s newscasts are known for being favorable to the government.

Since October, President Fox and the two most powerful broadcasters, TV Azteca and Televisa, have been on especially good terms, thanks to a government decision to reduce the airspace that the networks were obligated to grant the state as a way of paying taxes.

Communications analyst Efraín Mesías said the government acted in a mistaken manner in the CNI-Azteca case, by favoring the powerful network.

Fox did the same thing that a president would have done during the era of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, Mesías argued.

The relationship between the media and the PRI was traditionally cozy, to the point that in the 1960s and 1970s a situation in which the owners of the major TV networks, radio stations and newspapers were actually members of the governing party and accepted any kind of censorship by the government was seen as normal.

The independence of the media began to gain ground in the 1980s, but the two leading networks remained identified with the PRI until 2000, when Fox became the first president from another party in seven decades.

Despite its serious financial problems, CNI Channel 40 gradually grew in ratings and carved out a space for itself in the market.

But as it continued to face financial difficulties, CNI-TVM signed an agreement with TV Azteca in 1998 for joint programming and advertising. The contract indicated that TV Azteca would lend its new partner over $20 million.

In 2000, CNI-TVM broke off the agreement, accusing TV Azteca of trying to push it into bankruptcy in order to bid on and take over its frequency.

TV Azteca, which owns several channels and is listed on the stock market, and CNI, a small company with one channel and a shoestring budget, have been involved in a legal dispute ever since.

In December, the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce found in favor of both parties, ruling that TV Azteca, the plaintiff, was partially justified in suing for repayment of the debt, but that the arguments set forth in defense of CNI-TVM were also partially justified.

TV Azteca took the resolution out of context, and argued that the International Court of Arbitration had found in its favor, which gave it the right to seize the CNI-TVM transmission center. But neither that decision nor the several rulings handed down by local judges gave it the right to take over another company’s facilities under Mexican law.

After the frequency was restored to CNI Channel 40 on Monday, TV Azteca executives said they would continue fighting in the courts.

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Attempts to voice antiwar sentiment
despite media, gov’t

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Feb. 4 (AGR)-- In the past week three high-profile attempts to air antiwar sentiments have come to light. Two -- a commercial and the co-opting of a White House poetry symposium -- were stymied; the third, another commercial, still may make it to the public.

In the two stymied attempts, the Comcast cable television company rejected ads that an anti-war group wanted to air during President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech, saying they included unsubstantiated claims, and the White House said last week it postponed a poetry symposium because of concerns that the event would be politicized because some poets had said they wanted to protest military action against Iraq.

The symposium on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman was scheduled for Feb. 12.

“While Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum,” said Noelia Rodriguez, spokeswoman for first lady Laura Bush.

Mrs. Bush has held a series of White House symposiums to salute America's authors. The gatherings usually include discussions of literature and its societal impact.

But the poetry symposium soon inspired a nationwide protest.

Sam Hamill, a poet and founder of the highly regarded Copper Canyon Press, declined the invitation and e-mailed friends asking for anti-war poems or statements. He encouraged those who planned to attend to bring along anti-war poems.

Hamill said he's gotten more than 1,500 contributions, including ones from poets W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Peace Action Education Fund had spent $5,000 to have six 30-second ads aired on CNN by Philadelphia-based Comcast beginning Jan. 28, the night of president Bush’s speech.

The ads were to be broadcast in the Washington, DC, area. But Comcast's legal department notified the group that morning that the ads would not air.

The company’s statement did not specify what Comcast objected to.

The ads show citizens expressing opposition to war with Iraq and were to run twice on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

The idea was to reach Congress members, Cabinet members and other Washington decision makers, said the Rev. Robert Moore, executive director of the 2,000-member peace group, which is based in Princeton, NJ.

“This is an outrageous infringement on our First Amendment rights, in the center of our democracy, Washington, DC,” he said.

Lastly, a high-ranking Methodist bishop appears in an anti-war commercial aimed at persuading Bush, a fellow Methodist, that a US attack on Iraq would violate “God’s law.”

The 30-second commercial, featuring Bishop Melvin Talbert and actress Janeane Garafalo, may begin airing in New York and Washington, DC this week.

In the commercial Garofalo suggests that up to a half-million people could be killed or wounded if the United States invades Iraq.

“Do we have the right to do that to a country that’s done nothing to us?” Garofalo asks.

Talbert, former bishop of Seattle and San Francisco, is the chief ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Church, which has an estimated 8.4 million US members.

“War will only create more terrorists,” said Talbert, who joined a 13-person delegation of religious leaders on a five-day peace mission to Iraq that ended Jan. 3.

TrueMajority, an advocacy organization started by Ben and Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen, produced the commercial. It is sponsored by the National Council of Churches.

In a statement, Talbert criticized the Bush administration’s push toward war to remove Saddam Hussein.

“No nation under God has that right,” Talbert said. “It violates international law. It violates God’s law and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Sources: Associated Press reports

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