[1] First proposed in 2005 and subsidized by Venezuela, Telesur was launched under the government of Hugo Chávez, and promoted as "a Latin socialist answer to CNN".

In Latin America, teleSUR can be seen in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and other territories as Aruba, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Curaçao in DirecTV's package (channels 292 and 722).

The proposed alternative Latin American television network that would become Telesur took shape on 24 January 2005, as part of the projects approved in a council of ministers of the Venezuelan government.

"[2] Telesur began broadcasting on a limited, four-hour schedule on 24 July 2005, on the 222nd birthday of Latin American leader Simón Bolívar.

In 2009, Venezuela subsidized the launch of the communications satellite Venesat-1, in part to amplify Telesur's programming by enabling it to avoid geo-blocking efforts by DirectTV, an American company.

Argentina was its second main sponsor, but after the victory of big tent center-right coalition Cambiemos in the elections of 2015, the new government decided in 2016 to pull out allegedly because of a "lack of 'pluralism'.

[9] In June 2006, Uruguay's Minister of Education and Culture, Brovetto, expressed worries regarding the network's editorial line on certain issues and governments in the region, and how the diplomacy of his country could be affected by it.

[citation needed] On 13 March 2020, the new government of Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou stopped funding the network as part of the country's new foreign affairs strategy of "not integrating alliances based on ideological affinities".

[16] Academic Stuart Davis cites the cancellation as an example of how United States sanctions hamper public funding of media production in Venezuela.

[16] The channel's news agenda was originally decided by its board of directors with the aid of an advisory council, consisting of many leftist intellectuals, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, poet Ernesto Cardenal, writers Eduardo Galeano, Tariq Ali, Saul Landau, editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique and historian Ignacio Ramonet, Argentine film producer Tristán Bauer, free software pioneer Richard Stallman and US actor and activist Danny Glover.

[19][20] Telesur correspondent in Argentina, Edgardo Esteban, was awakened the morning on 11 September 2008, by the detonation of a homemade bomb of low intensity in front of his home.

[34] 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.

[2][5][30][29] By 2019, 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".

[37] A June 2015 publication from the Legatum Institute states that TeleSUR's Venezuelan coverage "attempts to whitewash regime abuses and failures.

"[38] 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".

[39] 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.

[40] Agence France-Presse concluded that the original author of the photos was Karla Salcedo Flores and that the images "do not show a man pouring gasoline on one of the burning trucks during the incidents", as alleged by Telesur.

[45] In 2005, Vivanco stated, "If the shareholders of this company belong to a government like Cuba where they have no basic concept of free speech and zero tolerance for independent views, God help us".

After a rigorous review of their documents and after being warned that if they continued their work in the country their personal safety was at risk, the crews were released but banned from leaving the hotel.

[citation needed] On 25 September, Telesur journalists claimed they had been attacked with high-frequency radiation and mind-altering gas along with other international journalists accompanying Manuel Zelaya during his entrenchment in the Brazilian embassy after returning to the country on 21 Sept.[54] Telesur reported on 9 October that their media staff, who were covering the stay of President Manuel Zelaya in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since his arrival on 21 September, were forced to leave by "the progressive deterioration of their health due to a systematic plan of repression carried out by the de facto authorities".

According to the Swedish analyst Nathan Shachar the Cuban government thusly censors any information that is not to the liking of its "political system",[68] which includes "free elections, multiparty, strikes and protest movements that are non-existent on the island".

[69][70] After his interview with Christiane Amanpour for CNN, President Nicolás Maduro announced that as part of the U.S. media coverage of the 2014 Venezuela protests Telesur would launch in English, French and Portuguese on 24 July 2014, to coincide with Simón Bolívar Day.