What's Fair in Coverage of RCTV Shutdown?

I was going to write a long rant about this after watching the media just twist and lie about the whole Hugo Chavez vs TV station after I saw NBC and other network news stations as well as the press claim that Chavez is limiting freedom of speech with out telling the PEOPLE what really happened. Watch the Documentary below and read this from Source Watch

Source: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), May 25, 2007

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) is criticizing U.S. news media for presenting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's non-renewal of the television station RCTV's broadcast license "as a simple matter of censorship." FAIR points out that "RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez's democratically elected government." Moreover, "the Venezuelan government is basing its denial of license on RCTV's involvement in the 2002 coup, not on the station's criticisms of or political opposition to the government." BBC News reports that the Latin American press is portraying Chavez as "authoritarian" and Venezuelan media as "increasingly suffocated." Journalism and human rights groups have denounced the non-renewal of RCTV's license. Governments have the right not to renew a broadcast license, but a standard process should be followed, international rights groups maintain. "We're not arguing that the concession ... should be given to RCTV," said the Committee to Project Journalists' Carlos Lauria. "We're just saying that there's no process to evaluate if it should be." Just Foreign Policy's Patrick McElwee agrees, but notes that a 1987 law -- enacted previous to Chavez -- "charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal" and "does not seem to require any administrative hearing."