Mr. Jon Snow
Director
Channel 4 News

Dear Mr. Snow:

Channel 4 is a first rate news broadcaster. It is a shame, though, that the piece on Venezuela was filled with prejudice, lack of context, guilt by association and innuendos characteristic of the US most reactionary press.

Such report lacked the intellectual effort required to capture the essence of a process that has faults, of course, but has also for the first time in Latin America attacked the roots of inequality and social exclusion.

The report would rather place President Chavez' image alongside Saddam Hussein's than try to make the British audience understand the nature of the political process taking place in Venezuela.

I have to confess that as a Channel 4 loyal viewer, I am deeply disappointed.

Even more so, the fact that your reporters presented their 16 hours incarceration and subsequent liberation as an authoritarian action, despite the fact that they entered a military compound and filmed military training without authorization, was utterly irresponsible. In Greece, several British tourists spent three months in jail for much less than that. However, the double standards that characterize the treatment given to Latin America, allow remarks like this to be made.

In conclusion, Mr. Snow, I deeply regret that Channel 4 did not live up to the high standards that characterize it. I would hereby like to enclose some expressions of solidarity received from different British political, academic and union sectors, who understand that what happens in Venezuela is somehow more meaningful than the caricature shown by your channel.

Sincerely yours,
Alfredo Toro Hardy
Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the United Kingdom

Attached:

• House of Commons Debate -- 8th March 2006
• Article by Mayor of London , Ken Livingstone -- 18th February 2006
• Parliamentary Motion 1644 -- 14th February 2006
• Seminar on Venezuela -- 31st January 2006
• TUC Resolution -- 14th September 2005
• http://www.publications.parliament.uk/