TeleSur – window cracked into the world of Latin America
July 31, 2006
It's already been one year that the TeleSur signal is successfully competing with TV media monopolies that determined the nature of presenting the news, its interpretation, either positive or negative, from the point of view of big capital, media oligarchs and neo-liberal ideological purposes.
One may say that the main rival of the TeleSur in the information media of Latin America was the CNN channel in Spanish, which, despite the efforts of its professional and experienced collaborators, is yielding to the TeleSur team in the most important sphere: in unbiased presentation of events at the continent and the world, without those propaganda patterns that seemed to be inherited from the «cold war» times.
During the last year the TeleSur chiefs – President of the company – Venezuellan Andreas Izarra and General Director – Uruguayan Aram Aharonian manged to do extremely much – to set up a reliable reporters net from the USA to Argentine. 19 highly skilled journalists cover a complicated dynamics of social-political, economic and cultural life in the region, giving a true «picture» of the events that really take place, without censorship of the «bosses» and self-censoring, to which private TV channels usually resort.
TeleSur is financed by Venezuela, Argentine, Cuba and Bolivia. Uruguay plans to join them only after it has passed all the necessary formalities in the national Parliament and has received its consent.
It is very difficult to speak about the audience of TeleSur, but it, according to the most modest forecast, reaches 10 million people in Latin America only. TeleSur is available to viewers in the Western hemisphere countries via satellite broadcast (Direct TV). Besides this, the channel has at least 2.5 million «subscribers» to cable TV of Latin America. Moreover, TeleSur has its portal in the Internet, which was visited by almost 2 million people only this June -July: http://www.telesurtv.net.
TeleSur headquarters is situated in Venezuela (Caracas), where the Bolivarian reforms are actively being implemented in all spheres of life. But it does not mean that the Bolivarian ideology determines the subjects and problems of the channel. TeleSur is open for all points of views, is ready for dispute to all subjects, provides rostrum to anyone, who can be interesting to the Latin American spectator.
Naturally the channel has its most important task: to assist integration of the Latin American countries, keeping in mind the concerns of its people.