On Ecuadorean Socialism

By carlos Endara, translated.

It is not a habit of mine to watch national television, much less the channels which are owned by the government. Nevertheless, this morning whilst zapping through channels I was surprised to catch journalist Carlos Ochoa speaking against private news media.
I say that I was surprise due to the audacity by which this journalist commented. He criticized the fact that journalistic media only responds to the interests of their owners. Should they, then, respond to Mr. Ochoa's interests? Apparently Mr. Ochoa has no understanding of the concept of private property- in the end, if he dislikes some things that are said in certain private media, then he has the option of simply not watching them.

What is serious, however, is that Ochoa -a journalist- does not understand that the airspace and the salary he receives for being on television are both paid by Ecuadorean taxes and that he should dedicate himself to the objective presentation of the news instead of campaigning for the government, repeating the same slogans and bromides heard from the rank-and-file of the poorly-named twenty-first century Socialism.

(Translator note: Here Mr. Endara fails to see the correlation of government-owned institutions and the rise of propaganda and infringement of freedom of speech. Any government-run institution will naturally work in accordance with that government's agenda, and will act in as demagogic a way as it can. When taxes are used as a carte blanche to fund institutions that should be *properly* private, you create institutions that cannot be held accountable for their distortions, immorality and abuse because they are backed by the government.)

Ochoa himself complained that he had been dismissed from the channel Teleamazonas due to having expressed opinions that were not in step with the owners of the channel. Once I heard hearing the stream of nonsense that poured forth from his mouth this morning, I came to the conclusion that would have fired him too. Nevertheless, he has the audacity to make this complaint after I have seen a video -recorded secretly by TC television employees (a channel that is now in the hands of the state)- where the government-assigned administrator told the employees that if they didn't agree with what he said (concerning the censorship of a segment) "They could pass by Human Resources and file their resignations"-- the situation? During a cooking segment, one of the censored segments warned viewers about price inflation concerning some ingredients (This video can be seen on youtube under the words "Censura TC televisión")

How, then, can Ochoa criticize the private sector when, from the rank-and-file of the ill-named "Citizen Revolution", we have seen and continue to see even worse things?

(Note: Endara fails to make the final link-- what Socialism and Communism decry is *not* the act of determining what is being said on a private medium. Rather, Socialism believes there should be no such thing as a private medium that individuals have no right to determine what is being done with their property or how it is being portrayed- but instead it believes that there should be collectively-owned media, and that the *only* ones who can determine what *anyone* says, it is *them.* It seeks to replace the freedom of self-determination with the slavery of collective imposition.)