U.S. Media Wages Propaganda War in South America
by Randy Shaw‚ Sep. 19‚ 2007
Thanks to the Iraq War, George W. Bush has not focused on overthrowing progressive governments in South America. In fact, the Bush Administration has paid so little attention to the region that democracy and progressive economic policies have been allowed to flourish. But the United States media has not given up its historic role as spokespersons for the area’s elites. Led by Simon Romero of the New York Times, the traditional media portrays Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as a left-wing caricature, almost spoofing his efforts to help the poor. Bolivia’s Evo Morales is another frequent target, and Romero’s September 18 Times story offers the perfect opportunity to dissect media bias against politicians whose greatest sin is actually fulfilling their promises to help the poor.
From the 1950’s through the 1970’s, the CIA retained reporters like Romero to write stories undermining U.S. support for democratic governments in South and Central America. Today, Romero and others need no outside compensation to write such stories, as editors allow them to produce articles that fail the most basic tests of journalistic fairness.
Consider Romero’s September 18th article, “Radical Brings Some Stability to Bolivia.” The piece profiles Evo Morales - one of the world’s most courageous, innovative, and charismatic leaders.
(snip)
Romero writes, “for all the worries that Mr. Morales’s radicalism would create economic and political turmoil in Bolivia, the reality of his tenure appears to be that the country is relatively stable.”
Who had such worries? The Bolivian elite who backed Morales’ opponent? Romero? It is left unsaid, but the reader is to understand that (1) Morales is radical and (2) this radicalism raised worries of turmoil.
One would never know from this article that Morales won the Presidency amidst major turmoil. These cataclysms even forced the James Carville-backed leader to flee the country. Instead, Romero wants readers to think that Morales inherited a stable nation and yet risked casting it into chaos.
More:
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4925 ~~~~~~~~~~Simon Romero, Imperial Vampire
3 February, 2009 — RickB
See if you can spot it-
UYUNI, Bolivia: In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia – a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily.
The assumption of imperial privilege here is breathtaking in its arrogance. That Bolivia’s lithium is desired so all is at issue is how will they ‘surrender‘ it. How dare they not be ‘willing’ to feed the rapacious corporations and on terms wholly favourable to said corporations. Romero’s dedication to effete moronity is nothing new to those familiar with BoRev, Abiding in Bolivia or Inca Kola News but this purple prose really opens up new possibilities for him as the hack of choice for neoliberal rapists everywhere.
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/simon-romero-imperial-vampire/~~~~~~~~~~The New York Times and Hugo Chavez: A lesson in “liberal” propaganda
By Matt Kennard • November 26, 2008 @23:19
There aren’t many democratically elected leaders in the world that can still win landslide election victories a decade into their tenure. Tony Blair’s approval rating was down to 28 percent after a decade of rule; after eight years George W. Bush’s rating was down to 20 percent, the lowest in U.S. history.
But that’s exactly what happened in Venezuela this week when allies of President Hugo Chavez, who rose to power in 1999, won 18 out of 23 local election races. That’s about 75 percent of the available positions and there was a turnout of 66 percent. U.S. President-elect Obama won 52 percent of the popular vote early this month with a turnout of 60 percent.
This was not allowed to be acknowledged by the guardians of received wisdom in the U.S., the New York Times, who’s Latin America correspondent, Simon Romero, specializes in spouting propaganda. His article on the locals elections started thusly:
“From the hardened slums of this city to some of Venezuela’s most populous and economically important states, many of President Hugo Chávez’s supporters deserted him in regional elections, showing it is possible to challenge him in areas where he was once thought invincible.”
More:
http://www.thecommentfactory.com/the-new-york-times-and-hugo-chavez-a-lesson-in-liberal-propaganda-777~~~~~~~~~~The Times’s Anti-Chávez Bias
By Amitabh Pal
December 6, 2006
The New York Times seems to have it in for Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The paper’s Latin America bureau chief, Simon Romero, has a big anti-Chávez bias, and it shows.
Take Romero’s story on Chávez’s massive electoral triumph the past weekend. The lead reads: “President Hugo Chávez won a landslide victory in the presidential election on Sunday. But campaign officials for the opposition candidate contended that the results were tainted by intimidation and other irregularities.” The headline writer adopted the same tone. “Chávez Wins Easily in Venezuela, but Opposition Protests,” the headline read, while the subhead stated: “Challenger’s Vote Exceeds Predictions.”
Now, charges of fraud should be reported on, but Chávez’s margin of victory should have made Romero question the opposition’s accusations, instead of giving them such prominence. The fact that these assertions were half-hearted can be seen by the fact that Chávez’s opponent, Manuel Rosales, conceded defeat the same day.
Curiously, it seems that the Times’s web editorial staff recognized the problematic aspects of Romero’s piece. The online version reads quite differently, with the headline and opening sanitized and the subhead taken out altogether.
Romero continued his anti-Chávez crusade the day after Chávez’s triumph. “If President Hugo Chávez rules like an autocrat, as his critics in Washington and here charge, then he does so with the full permission of a substantial majority of the Venezuelan people,” his piece opened. The pull quote for the piece referred to “some heads being chopped,” come January. (Interestingly, the person quoted is Steve Ellner, a progressive scholar who has written on Venezuela for publications such as In These Times, and his full quote is much less hostile to Chávez.) Another person cited in the piece says that “Chavez is not a dictator, but he’s not a Thomas Jefferson either.” Well, who is? Not too many current world leaders have Jefferson’s caliber, including the person currently occupying his post.
Romero’s hostility toward Chávez was also obvious in the run up to the presidential election. In a story two days before election day, he chose to highlight a crime wave in Venezuela, and quoted the opposition presidential candidate Rosales (without providing any balance) blaming Chávez for the phenomenon.
If the propaganda model holds, U.S. newspaper reports and editorials will express outrage over Chávez’s actions while ignoring, justifying, or endorsing Uribe’s.
More:
http://www.progressive.org/mag_apb120606 ~~~~~~~~~~Simon Romero Is So Full of Shit
Lordy, so much has happened since your editor "went rogue" in a Venezuelan seaside retreat last week that its hard to choose what to write about. Oh I know let's pick on Simon Romero, because hey what a moron, right?
As the media watchdog group FAIR pointed out, the New York Times' laziest little foreign correspondent doesn't even try to keep up appearances anymore. Last week he farted out two back-to-back stories about how by winning three-quarters of the elections last week, Chavez backers have 1) "taken a blow" and 2) "suffered a stinging defeat ." It's like an accurate reporting of events, only opposite.
http://www.borev.net/2008/12/simon_romero_is_so_full_of_shi.html~~~~~~~~~~NYT vs. Venezuela's Election Results
11/27/2008 by Isabel Macdonald
Anyone who followed the results of Venezuela's regional elections last Sunday will know that President Hugo Chavez's party won 17 out of 22 contests up for grabs, garnering 52.5 percent of the popular vote to the opposition's 41.1 percent. Unless, that is, they were relying on New York Times Latin America correspondent Simon Romero.
Despite a well-documented pattern of media misinformation about Chavez, many media outlets, including L.A. Times and CNN, conceded the fact of Chavez allies' victory in Sunday's races.
But not Romero!
Yesterday, the Times published an article by Romero titled, "Chavez Supporters Suffer Defeat in State and Regional Races."
The article's lede:
President Hugo Chávez’s supporters suffered a stinging defeat in several state and municipal races on Sunday, with the opposition retaining power in oil-rich Zulia, the country’s most populous state, and winning crucial races here in the capital.
Today, the Times ran a follow-up piece penned by Romero under the headline "Once Considered Invincible, Chavez Takes a Blow," as well as an editorial that argued that "In Sunday's state and municipal elections Venezuelans showed just how fed up they are with his government's authoritarianism and incompetence."
Over at Narco News, Al Giordano takes on Romero's peculiar alternate reality of Venezuela's vote:
Imagine if elections for all 50 state governors in the United States were held on a single election day and 74 percent of those seats (or 37 out of 50 governorships) went to one political party's candidates. Imagine also that the victorious party's candidates had won 52.5 percent of all votes to just 41 percent for the opposition (the technical definition of an electoral landslide is a victory of ten percentage points or more).
If a New York Times reporter--or any reporter--then wrote the story of the election results and called it a "stinging defeat" for the victorious party, wouldn't he be laughed off of his beat?
But then again, if the New York Times had any journalistic standards when it came to reporting on Venezuela, Romero likely would have been laughed off his beat long ago...
More:
http://www.fair.org/blog/2008/11/27/nyt-v-venezuelas-election-results/~~~~~~~~~~Media, Propaganda and Venezuela
~snip~
Reporting on the ongoing issues, such as the protests and Chavez’s economic policies in Venezuela have shown similar signs of one-sidedness, from both the mainstream media of western countries such as the U.S. and U.K., and from Venezuela’s own elite anti-Chavez media, which “controls 95% of the airwaves and has a near-monopoly over newsprint, and … played a major part in the failed attempt to overthrow the president, Hugo Chavez, in April 2002…. The media is still directly encouraging dissident elements to overthrow the democratically elected president—if necessary by force.”
Charles Hardy, who lived in Venezuela for some 19 years and worked with the poor notes that “A great difference exists between what one reads in the U.S. newspapers and what one hears in the barrios and villages of Venezuela, places where the elite do not tread. Adults are entering literacy programs, senior citizens are at last receiving their pensions, and children are not charged registration to enter the public schools. Health care and housing have improved dramatically.” Reading mainstream versions, you would not get this picture.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/403/media-propaganda-and-venezuela#USInvolvementinVenezuelanCoup~~~~~~~~~~CIA Spins spider's web vs. Cuba and Venezuela
~snip~
On Aug. 25, for example, a few newspapers throughout Latin America, among them La Nacion of Buenos Aires, carried an article by Simon Romero of Caracas claiming that Venezuela has collaborated with Iran in a uranium enrichment program.
Journalists working with that paper and others told the Association of Media Professionals in Argentina that the CIA had fostered that line. They alleged that U.S. "diplomats" had offered them bribes to present the U.S. side in stories covering Venezuela's admission into the Mercosur trade group and Brazilian President Lula da Silva's bid for re-election in October.
The exposé by Victor Ego Ducrotto, appearing on the Rebelion web site on Aug. 25, claimed that CIA personnel worked "elbow to elbow" with the representatives of the right-wing Inter American Press Society, based in Miami.
More:
http://www.spinwatch.org/component/content/article/271-propaganda/3475-cia-spins-spiders-web-vs-cuba-and-venezuela~~~~~~~~~~NY Times misleads on Venezuelan military spending
Submitted by jonathan on Sat, 2007-03-03 16:50. Media Literacy/Bias | Propaganda and War
Summary:
Comparison of 'arms spending' doesn't include all arms spending
Full Story:
(an action alert from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
A February 25 report in the New York Times on Venezuela's international arms purchases ("Venezuela Spending on Arms Soars to World's Top Ranks") used selective information and an alarmist tone to suggest that Venezuela's military spending was a potential threat to regional stability.
Reporter Simon Romero's alarming lead read, "Venezuela's arms spending has climbed to more than $4 billion in the past two years, transforming the nation into Latin America's largest weapons buyer and placing it ahead of other major purchasers in international arms markets like Pakistan and Iran." By putting Venezuela in the company of Pakistan and Iran—whose military programs have attracted global suspicion—the report was clearly intended to stir alarm and frighten readers about Venezuela's military designs.
But there are several problems with this piece. First of all, as the article reveals further down, it was based on information provided by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon has a well-earned credibility problem when it comes to making intelligence claims about the threats posed by official enemies, and the fact that it was the source of the article's assertions should have been mentioned in the lead.
(snip)
Given that Venezuela spends at least some portion of its military budget domestically, this would imply a huge increase in military spending between 2004 and 2005--at least 50 percent, and perhaps more than doubling. Such a remarkable jump is hard to believe, particularly without Romero and his DIA sources calling attention to it, and raises doubts about the credibility of the article's entire premise.
More:
http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/media_literacy_bias/ny_times_misleads_on_venezuelan_military_spe
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