Mickey Mouse or Mickey Chavez? A peek into media terrorism.

I apologize in advance for posting up probably the most horrendous picture that could ever possibly circulate the World Wide Web… but I just couldn’t resist. Let me start by saying, I’m Venezuelan myself, and if you have not yet recognized this…face, let me introduce you, this is Venezuela’s infamous president, Hugo Chavez. Thank you very much.

Many of you are probably asking yourselves how this is relevant to the industry and why would she post up such a ridiculous picture of someone, who already has a reputation for being a communist-socialist-idealist-freak-who has no idea how to rule a country, wearing, what seems to be, Mickey Mouse’s ears!?

Yeah, well that’s my next point. As soon as I came into work this morning, and browsed some newspapers sites, I ran into Corriere della Sera.it, and bumped into Chavez and his mouse ears…oh jolly! I wonder what he did this time. Well, actually this time, it was the press who did it. A photographer was able to capture this image of Chavez with a particular background which looks like a panel containing two big black dots which ended up being in the right place, at the right time for the paparazzi to take this popular shot. The shot was then diffused in the different media including, the one and only, Reuters, and this is where the trouble began.

Chavez, after seeing his mocked image all over the web, made a generalized accusation for inciting “media terrorism.” And due to his non-stop hatred towards imperialism and USA, the fact that he’s being purposely transformed into Walt Disney’s favorite character, Mickey Mouse, has not made him a happy camper. Ironically, a few weeks prior to this, Chavez was hosting a forum to discuss media terrorism amongst journalists from 14 different countries who were supposedly present. In the meantime, on the other side of town (Caracas), the American largest newspaper association was hosting its semiannual meeting, where Chavez should have been present, but who instead, was holding his own ‘meeting’. “It’s necessary to discuss this issue of media terrorism throughout the world: the use of newspapers and national, international television and radio stations to generate terror, to even try to make war,” Chavez said while he was being broadcasted live.

And then this happens! Can things get any better? Media terrorism, that’s a new one. Specially for someone who is constantly closing down TV channels and politically arresting random people for saying…nothing. Yet he seems to be getting quite a lot of quorum on this terrorism matter. I personally would like to congratulate whoever started this whole media scam, and encourage them to start a ‘media war,’ against Chavez, if that’s even a term. Once again, the power of media has shown to be insatiable, it can create things and bring them down to ruins at the same time; (and I so hope this would be the case for Chavez). However, it should not be underestimated, but I also believe we could exploit the power of media a tidy bit more regarding calamities such as Hugo Chavez, who should not even exist, at least not in our world.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Media News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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