This article was originally posted by The LA Times
The channel’s newsreaders and reporters — who make no pretense of impartiality and are undeterred by harassment and threats of a takeover — regularly blast the president with slanted coverage
Reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, and Bogota, — From the time it goes on the air until it signs off, Globovision lets Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have it with both barrels.
The Caracas-based opposition news and opinion channel’s newsreaders and reporters — who make no pretense of impartiality and remain undeterred by harassment and threats of a takeover — regularly blast the president with obviously slanted coverage while giving opposition politicians free and usually unchallenged rein to vent.
“We think Hugo Chavez should be investigated for treason,” opposition leader Pablo Medina said calmly last week during a television interview as he discussed the president’s close ties to Cuba and his handling of a scandal involving imported food that rotted in scores of misplaced shipping containers.
Later that day, accusations of witchcraft came up in discussions of Chavez’s controversial decision to open the crypt of founding father Simon Bolivar, which psychologist Mercedes Pulido described as a “pornographic spectacle.” Globovision reporters called the scene ghoulish and sacrilegious.