To those who, like myself, had assumed that Telesur was merely an outlet for pro-Chavez propaganda, this talk by James Painter of the BBC World Service revealed some surprising and some not-so-surprising facts about this Caracas-based pan-Latin American TV network. In fact, Telesur is not owned exclusively by Venezuela, but a joint project in which a number of Latin American governments are stakeholders - although it is all paid for by Venezuela’s oil wealth. Claiming to provide an alternative to CNN and other Western media, it follows the example of other ‘counter-hegemonic’ news channels like Al-Jazeera, which have mushroomed in recent years in an attempt to reverse the flow of information from the West to the developing world.

 How far Telesur lives up to its claim to provide a credible and pluralistic alternative to CNN was one of the questions that Painter explored in his thesis. His study was based on a detailed content analysis of Telesur news reports in November and December 2006, which covered both the US mid-terms and the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan elections. To my surprise, he found that, despite the politicized content, much of this coverage was reasonably balanced and displayed no obvious bias. For example, in reporting the Nicaraguan elections, Telesur gave all 3 candidates equal time and balanced treatment – there was even some criticism of Daniel Ortega, the left-wing candidate. When comparing Telesur news stories and CNN coverage on the same day, Painter concluded that the priority given to different stories reflected different assumptions, but that neither channel was guilty of falsification.

 However, that was as far as the surprises went: when it came to reporting events in Venezuela or the other stakeholder countries, this even-handed approach vanished. In stories on Cuba, Bolivia and Argentina (all sponsors), Painter noted that there was little criticism of these governments and a clear selective bias in coverage. And – who would have guessed it? – this bias was most evident in coverage of the Venezuelan elections. Predictably, Chavez was given favourable treatment in interviews, while a list of Telesur ‘analysts’ who at face value appeared to have neutral backgrounds, were revealed to have clear political affiliations with the Chavez camp. Most controversially, and to the consternation of other international news channels, Telesur broke an agreement not to show the exit polls prior to the final election result, announcing a massive lead for the ‘Bolivarian candidate’ over an hour before the result came out.

 So, it seems that Telesur has a long way to go before it can pass BBC standards – although we shouldn’t forget that the media’s ‘public service mandate’ is a very British notion, with no precedent in Latin America. In fact, according to Latinobarometro surveys, Latin Americans are fully aware of the biased nature of state-owned news channels – apparently more so than the audience of the equally biased US corporate media. With its patchy coverage, Telesur is also far from being able to compete with CNN, which has around 17 million viewers in Latin America. Bearing all this in mind, Telesur and its ‘soft propaganda’ is probably, on balance, less damaging than Fox News.

This talk was based on James Painter's PhD thesis at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where he is a Visiting Fellow. Click here to read his full thesis.