leftist views representing its sponsorship nations: Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela. Joel D. Hirst, a former International Affairs Fellow in Residence of the Council on Foreign Relations, stated that the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), knowing the importance of propaganda, "embarked upon an ambitious plan to control information across the hemisphere" and began their plan with the creation of Telesur in 2005. In 2005, according to Connie Mack IV, a Republican from Florida's 14th congressional district who authored a House amendment authorizing Washington to create a station that would broadcast exclusively to Venezuela, Telesur undermines the balance of power in the western hemisphere and spreads Chávez’s "anti-American, anti-freedom rhetoric". After the House passed the amendment, the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, D.C., Bernardo Álvarez, stated that "in Venezuela there are 48 channels of free access to anyone with a television set and a small antenna. Only two of them belong to the government. You can also receive more than 120 channels from four continents." The chairman of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America broadcasts in Latin America, Walter Isaacson said that the US could not be "out-communicated" by what he called enemies such as Telesur. Political bias Critics have argued that Telesur works as a propaganda network for the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and provides coverage that focus only on information that may benefit or harm a government, according to its political alignment. La Patilla stated that Telesur "insistently pointed out through reports that in Venezuela there is no humanitarian emergency, scarcity or general crisis" and "dismissed the exodus of millions of Venezuelans in search of a better life". According to the Argentinian website Infobae, during a large demonstration in Argentina in December 2017 against policies proposed by center-right Argentine President Mauricio Macri (who previously denounced human rights abuses in Venezuela), Telesur "omitted the attack on uniforms and the large number of injured policemen (...) and also omitted that protagonist of one of the incidents was pre-candidate to deputy for a left party, Santiago Sebastian Romero". While "there were demonstrations in Venezuela against the economic policies of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in the same year, that ended with 100 deaths, thousands of arbitrary detentions and injured people. In those cases, Telesur praised the Venezuelan National Guard and the Bolivarian National Police, accused the demonstrators of being related to