Al Jazeerah is not alone anymore in the struggle against the monopoly of CNN propaganda: the Latin-American television channel TeleSUR responds.

Ten days ago I started working at TeleSUR as a publishing adviser. TeleSUR is an international television channel with headquarters in Caracas, established to give voice to the peoples of the South in response to a mediatic landscape that is globally dominated by big economic emporiums based in wealthy countries. All over the world, men and women concerned by the need of a television that gives the social role back to the citizens, that breaks the informative monopoly of the powerful and brings truth and educational rigor to mass media’s international scene, have placed their hope in this project. These lines are dedicated to them because I believe that it is our obligation to keep them informed about how their hope is developing. At the same time, I believe that it is opportune to share my sensations and emotions with my comrades at TeleSUR.

As in any adventure, there are lights and shadows. Both evidently nuanced in my impressions by an inevitable subjectivity. Because of it, everyday I see mistakes and passions, frustrations and hopes, distress and enthusiasm. To those who thought that only a political decision and some money might be enough to raise a wall of containment to lies in the form of a television channel, I have to say that they were wrong. To those others who impatiently believe that TeleSUR is not adequately advancing and that confusion and lack of definition is getting hold of the project, I have to assure that this is not the reality.

I would lie if I alleged that there are no mistakes, problems and miseries in the fourth floor of this building in the Caracas neighborhood of Los Ruices. In what other place of the world are they absent? But more than that, here we have young journalists who compensate their lack of experience with their enthusiasm and talent to work. We have technical personnel whose extraordinary capacity overcomes the few mistakes they make, and people in charge whose errors cast hardly any shade on the firm decision to push ahead with this project.

It is clear that every day there are deficiencies in the emission of an interview by satellite, in the selection of a documentary, in the draft of a text or in the frustrated search of an image. And even if it is essential to work and fight to improve and overcome these setbacks which frustrate us and make us to feel inadequate, it is good to know that such an interview with defective sound has more decency than thousands of hours of wretched contests in big North American televisions. And that such a documentary, probably slow and emitted too many times, possesses more emotion and nobility than Hollywood’s best production. And that such a run-of-the-mill text has more truth than a dozen frivolous and manipulated news items emitted by the CNN. And that even though that image could never be obtained to accompany that particular piece of news and we had to solve its absence with some second-order option, we have achieved in offering the world some news that would have been silenced if TeleSUR had not existed.

Bureaucracy also oppresses us, but does it not also happen in big multinational companies as well? During these past ten days, I could not manage to have a wastebasket in my office, but I found dozens of professionals ready to face the empire of lies, to listen to what I had to offer them, to accept my suggestions and to share challenges and dreams. And then I suddenly realized that in this channel there are very few things to throw at the wastebasket that I did not have.

I did not write this to explain away our faults. Nor have I done it to transmit tranquility to our friends of the whole world pretending everything is OK in this adventure upon which they have placed so many hopes.

In this crucible of Latin-American accents that is TeleSUR we all know that nothing will be easy, some of the obstacles will come from those who are already working hard to aggravate this project, but others will be the result of our own mistakes. Still, we will neither permit ourselves the luxury of being frustrated by the small failures and deficiencies that for sure will be frequent, nor the comfort and negligence of accepting them like something inevitable.

This article appeared originally at Rebelión (www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=25049)

A note by the translator: TeleSUR represents a much needed innovation in communications. We are used to thinking of information as based upon national interests, territorial ones defined by a State, but which all too frequently claim to be “world” news. CNN claims to be the voice of an international community, but that only seems to be true in as much as it can be beamed into any home that has a satellite dish. Al Jazeerah broke the pattern by establishing itself as a news service that crossed geographical borders and attempted to present information that was relevant to the Pan Arab reality. Now, TeleSUR has extended that philosophy to the Spanish-speaking world. The only confines are those of our minds, willing to listen to the variety of voices stretching far beyond any geographical border, connecting many people with a common goal, to express the true aspirations of the people of the Southern Hemisphere. It is a project that connects technology with idealism. Reality with hopes.

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