“We want our cameras to get into places that their [stations like CNN etc] cameras have never been, to give a real, street-level view … The true face of Latin America.’” Said Botero, Telesur’s news director.

Telesur- Television of the South, is a new pan-american TV channel, based in Venezuela which aims to rival CNN and other Spanish language channels coming out of the US. It was created in 2005. It aims to transmit contextualised information and to help form critical citizens that are informed and can participate in society.

“It’s a question of focus, of where we look at our continent from,” said Mr Botero, “They look at it from the United States. So they give a rose-tinted, flavour-free version of Latin America. We want to look at it from right here.”

The delegations of Malaysia, Syria and Palestine, who participated in the 7th Conference of Ministers of Information of the Movement of Unaligned Countries (Cominac) showed interest this week that the signal of Telesur arrive in their countries and show the world the reality of their people.
“It’s necessary that Telesur comes to Palestine to transmit the real conflict that we live, beyond what is described by agencies like Reuters,” said the minister from Palestine.

Yesterday, 4 July, agreements were reached to expand the station’s communication to Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Iran, and Morocco.

Most of the money for Telesur comes from Venezuela. But the governments of Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba are also backing it.

Aram Aharonian, Telesur’s director, said, “We are convinced that there is no way to change reality unless we first see it as it is. … this is the largest problem we Latin Americans face. Eduardo Galeano says that for 513 years we have been trained to see ourselves with other eyes, with the eyes of foreigners. Today we begin to see ourselves with our own eyes. We are tired of being told who we are, how we are, and who we should do.”