A Bitter War of Words; Chavez and the private press can't seem to get along.

Byline: Phil Gunson

President Hugo Chavez calls Venezuela's four main television stations "the four horsemen of the Apocalypse," and photos of various media bosses adorn the walls of a so-called hot corner in a downtown Caracas plaza. The display is not meant as a tribute: graffiti denounce the four media moguls--who include Gustavo Cisneros, owner of the TV channel Venevision, and Alberto Federico Ravell, the executive director of another independent station called Globovision. The television magnates, whose stations attract roughly three quarters of all TV viewers in the country, are not the only objects of Chavez's wrath: he once memorably advised some of the country's private-newspaper owners to "roll up [their papers] real tight and shove them in their... pockets."

The late Canadian writer Marshall McLuhan once noted, famously, that "the medium is the message." That certainly applies to the run-up to Venezuela's Aug. 15 recall referendum. The country's private media are playing a crucial role in the campaign--not just with their political coverage but also because the media themselves have become a central issue in the country's political polarization. Venezuela's TV and newspaper owners are bitter opponents of the leftist president. To many of them, Chavez has destroyed the economy and undermined democracy. The owners have not just aligned themselves with the opposition Democratic Coordinator coalition but late last year a number of them were accused of involvement through their outlets in the nine-week-long strike convened by unions and the private sector that brought the economy to a near standstill. "I don't think the media set out to take a leading role," says former foreign minister Simon Alberto Consalvi, who is on the editorial board of the newspaper El Nacional. "They filled a gap left by the collapse of the traditional parties. Now they're frontline protagonists in the political scene--a major source of pressure, or influence, on public opinion."

Many analysts say the private media have at times gone too far with their criticism of the government, damaging their credibility and that of the opposition. "The media are more of a liability to the opposition than an asset," asserts one prominent TV and radio personality in the capital. "But if I said that publicly I'd lose my job." In April 2002, ...