Hombres de Telepropaganda

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro combine their broadcasting expertise, and attract 2% of Venezuelan viewers:

...Telesur, the brainchild of Cuban communist Fidel Castro and his ideological spawn Hugo Chávez. They say that it was created to both compete with foreign media conglomerates and offer a side of the news that is uniquely Latino. Independent, they say, from any voice but that of the people. The truth, however, is far from their propaganda platforms. Telesur is being funded by the leftist governments in Uruguay, Argentina, and Cuba, with Venezuela alone controlling 51% of the company. It will be housed in Caracas at the headquarters of Venezuela state media, where Chávez regularly opines for hours on end about impending imperialist invasion to the delight of only 2% of the Venezuelan public.

Perhaps the cast of other characters involved helps explain that:

Chávez's recently resigned Minister of Information [and Propaganda] Andres Izarra will head the corporation, and the board will indeed be diverse. Pakistan-born British leftist Tariq Ali and French Le Monde Diplomatique editor Ignacio Ramonet will join the likes of Uruguayan writer by day, Marxist by night Eduardo Galeano. In another assurance of indisputable quality, Danny Glover, the star of such world-renowned films as "Lethal Weapon," will be in on the act.

Contributing last is infamous Marxist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel....

And look who else is part of the team:

At the end of April [Chavez] met with Castro and hundreds of regional communists in Havana before flying to Brazil for the first ever Arab-Latin America summit, where he met with the Qatari delegation to work on a deal to exchange footage and material with Al Jazeera, with whom Tariq Ali is connected. The deal is finally getting attention, earning Telesur the name "El Jazeera," for good reason.

As with all good dictators competition is discouraged:

...many [Venezuelan] stations and newspapers are practicing self-censorship because of inane laws making it constitutionally illegal to "offend or show disrespect for the president."

Opposition-aligned Globovisión was recently indicted on 20 violations of constitutional law, with a separate harassment for simply forgetting to refer to the Republic of Venezuela as "Bolivarian" in a newscast.

Say buenos noches, amigos.