March 29, 2005
TV channel aims to be Latin America's CNN

(Associated Press) - "Loose computer cables, laptops and a video camera fill a cramped hotel room where a team of journalists are laying the groundwork for a new television network that hopes to be the CNN of Latin America.

With financial backing from Venezuela's government, the Telesur network is scheduled to begin transmitting by satellite 24 hours a day within three or four months, offering news and opinion shows from a South American perspective.

'Telesur's reason for being is the need to see Latin America with Latin American eyes,' director Aram Aharonian said.

'It's our right to have our own vision of what happens in Latin America, and not what Europeans or Americans, or whoever, tell us about how we are, who we are,' said Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan who has worked for years as a print journalist (...)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has called Telesur an important step toward Latin American integration.

His government is putting about $2.5 million into startup costs with support from Argentina and Uruguay, and the channel has an agreement to share material with state-run TV Brasil, Aharonian said (...)

Aharonian said the channel should be broadcasting full-time by June or July, with news bureaus planned in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, the United States (likely in New York) and either Bolivia or Peru (...)

The channel is to offer about 40 percent news programs, plus opinion shows, documentaries and Latin American films".