Venezuelan media group Telesur to open regional office in Beirut

BEIRUT — The Venezuelan media group Telesur, which runs a television channel and news agency of the same name, will open a regional office in Beirut, Information Minister Paul Morcos said Wednesday, according to the state-run National News Agency (NNA).

Morcos made the announcement after meeting Venezuela’s new ambassador to Lebanon, José Gregorio Biomorgi Muzattiz, who arrived in Beirut in September. He said the group is relocating its regional hub from Syria and that he had “facilitated the formalities” to reorganize Telesur’s legal status in Lebanon. The process is underway, he added, without giving a timeline.

The ambassador said Telesur, founded in 2005 as a “Bolivarian” alternative to Western media, would present “a clear image of what is happening in Lebanon, across the Middle East and in Latin America.” He also stressed the need to expand cultural and media cooperation between Lebanon and Venezuela, noting that ties have not matched the presence of Lebanon’s large diaspora community in the country.

Estimates suggest some 300,000 people of Lebanese origin live in Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and whose government, led by President Nicolás Maduro, has long been at odds with Washington.

Telesur, headquartered in Caracas and chaired by co-founder Patricia Villegas Marin, broadcasts in Spanish and English across the Americas and parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.