Venezuelan TV network fined $2 mn
October 19th, 2011 - 11:50 am ICT by IANSCaracas, Oct 19 (IANS/EFE) Venezuelan broadcasting regulators Tuesday fined Globovision television 9.3 million bolivares ($2.1 million) for the network’s coverage of a prison siege.
The fine is equivalent to 7.5 percent of Globovision’s gross revenues in 2010, the head of the regulator, Pedro Maldonado, told a press conference.
He said they concluded that the network’s coverage of the crisis in June at a prison on the outskirts of Caracas took the form of a justification for criminal behaviour.
The fine does not mean even a temporary suspension of the network’s broadcasting and Globovision can appeal the decision through the courts, Maldonado said.
The sanction was imposed through an administrative process opened in June in connection with what occurred during the El Rodeo Prison crisis, where for almost a month a thousand inmates, some of them armed, resisted a military siege.
The regulator’s review of the network’s coverage during the period June 16-19 determined that Globovision sought to incite law-breaking and to alarm the populace, Maldonado said.
“It also showed hatred and intolerance for political reasons,” he said.
It accused the channel of dubbing the sounds of machine-gun fire onto video sequences.
The vice president of the Venezuelan channel Globovision, Maria Fernanda Flores, said Tuesday that the fine imposed by Conatel is “unpayable” and announced that they will appeal even if it must be to the “heavenly” court.
“This fine is unpayable,” Globovision Vice President Maria Fernanda Flores said shortly after the announcement.
It was June 17 when the Venezuelan government deployed 5,000 militarized police personnel to quell uprisings at the neighboring El Rodeo I and El Rodeo II prisons, about 30 km from the capital.
El Rodeo I was quickly subdued, though as the cost of three dead - two of them police personnel - and a score of other officers wounded.
Authorities then laid siege to El Rodeo II, opting for negotiations instead of a frontal assault, and retook the institution in early July.
Disturbances at the prisons began after a June 12 armed clash inside El Rodeo I that left 22 people dead.
–IANS/EFE
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Tags: administrative process, conatel, criminal behaviour, efe, fernanda flores, globovision, gross revenues, heavenly court, machine gun fire, maria fernanda, military siege, pedro maldonado, populace, prison crisis, rodeo ii, tv network, uprisings, venezuelan government, venezuelan tv, video sequences