Whilst I doubt they'd be sentenced to death for treason, I can't think of a better example of a media monopoly abusing its power than Globovision in Venezuela.
Chavez is hardly a champion of the free press, but the wounded complaints from globovision ring a little hollow. They have a monopoly on media in venezuela, and have repeatedly abused their position in ways that would be considered unimaginable elsewhere.
If in some nightmarish scenario FOX news became the only news channel in the US, and actively participated in a coup to overthrow Obama, I'm not sure how legitimate their pleas for "media freedom" would be if attempts were subsequently made to dismantle their monopoly.
Also, whilst on the subject, I'm no fan of Chavez but it doesn't take much analysis to realize that this is a sensationalist attention grabbing headline:
"Chavez says capitalism may have ended life on Mars"
Its amusing to assume he's blaming capitalism for the lack of life on Mars, but to me this looks like a poorly worded, and carefully edited metaphor for the destructive power of capitalism. Not the best metaphor, but then its difficult to know what he actually said, how well it was translated, and then what was edited out "for effect".
"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.
Chavez, who also holds capitalism responsible for many of the world's problems, warned that water supplies on Earth were drying up.
"Careful! Here on planet Earth where hundreds of years ago or less there were great forests, now there are deserts. Where there were rivers, there are deserts," Chavez said, sipping from a glass of water.
The media has a field day with Chavez. He's never short of soundbites, and people like reading about the "crackpot south american leader", so reports invariable conform to this caricature and make every effort to ridicule him. Which is admittedly not difficult...
This isn't a great example of a free press either - dumbed down, edited and heavily spun reuters reports being repeated in commercial titles across the world. "You are all free to parrot the same source" isn't exactly freedom. Its a great example of how commercial media is painfully reliant on third hand tit-bits from a handful of sources. There was a time when titles had their own foreign correspondents, whose local expertise could be called upon to provide insight and analysis into foreign affairs. Unfortunately a depressing majority of titles decided to dispense with local expertise, in favour of parroting whatever gibberish came over the wire.
