Rather than focus only on Venezuela as I have in past articles around this time of year (here and here), I’ve decided to also highlight articles about a few other South American countries in this year’s worst five. I’ll save the very worst for last.
#5. Politico fibs about Argentina
Argentina’s recovery from its debt default provides an immensely important lesson to countries around the world. Its real GDP recovered within 2 years but a Politico article by Zeke Turner claimed it took more than five. The mistake that Turner made was using figures for Argentina’s GDP measured in US dollars instead of Argentina’s national currency. Measuring the size of an economy in US dollars may be appropriate for assessing its “pull” in the global economy, but not for measuring living standards. No economist would say that Canada, for example, suffered a recession in the late 1990s when its real GDP fell as measured in US dollars. Canada’s economy was growing rapidly at the time. Incredibly, a Politico editor chose to deny the error rather than correct it.
#4. Ecuador might be on its way to being “Latin America’s Greece”?
How does a magazine that takes itself quite seriously and that supposedly specializes in economics (The Economist) end up promoting a claim this ludicrous? According to the IMF, Ecuador’s gross debt to GDP ratio is 18 percent of GDP, Greece’s is 174 percent. That ratio is a rough and sometimes misleading measure of a government debt burden, but it’s good enough to demolish the outlandish comparison the Economist was trying to make.
I explained here that Economist simply gathered wild allegations from government opponents, subjected them to zero scrutiny, and then passed them along. Not surprising when you consider that the Economist also said, just prior to the Iraq war, that “only a fool or a knave” could doubt that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
#3. The U.K. Guardian’s brutal journalism about protests in Ecuador
The “liberal” Guardian does worse – much worse in fact – than the more openly reactionary Economist in an article entitled “Protests by 1,000s of Ecuadorians meet with brutal repression”. The reporter, David Hill, applies the same technique as the Economist – i.e. uncritically reporting anything said by bitter opponents of the Ecuadorian government– except that Hill’s allegations are even more serious. Hill disregarded conclusive evidence that protesters were violent. Check out the video of the protests captured by Telesur in Quito. Any fair minded person will end up gasping at Hill’s dishonesty. He also pushed a crazy theory that the government issued a state of exception over volcanic activity to stifle the protests. The volcano, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, had produced an ash cloud 5 km high. It threatened two major cities and the food supply for millions of people. In a country of sixteen million people that is serious national level threat by any sane criteria.
The Guardian has long been feuding with Julian Assange,who has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past three years. That might have helped Hill’s atrocious article get published. However, the Guardian has long been willing to host smears of Noam Chomsky, and even its long-time employee Seumas Milne after he left The Guardian. There are deeper problems with that newspaper.
#2. The Daily Beast explains how Venezuela’s military saved democracy
This article by Itxu Diaz claims that the military secretly forced Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to accept the opposition’s landslide victory in the December 6 National Assembly elections. So many contradictions to untangle. The military is villainous and under the thumb of the government. The military is also the opposition’s secret protector and it pushes the government around “behind the scenes”. Contradiction and conspiracy theory are preferable to conceding that Venezuela is a democracy and that its faults have been grotesquely exaggerated because that suits U.S. foreign policy objectives.
#1. Financial Times reporter Andres Schipani runs away with it.
Schipani is the Financial Times’ “Andres Correspondent”. His November 30 article stoops lower than using one sided sourcing. It begins by quoting “Carlos, who asked for his real name not to be published”. This anonymous source said that “Sometimes government people send us to murder. We work in partnership. It’s screwed up.”
Not even Human Rights Watch, which has been comically disproportionate and even dishonest in its criticism of Venezuela, has been willing to accuse the government of ordering assassinations.
And how trustworthy is Shipani given the immense level of trust he demands of his readers by citing an anonymous source like “Carlos”? Consider how his article dealt with the assassination of the opposition politician Luis Manual Diaz. Shipani depicts the murder as politically motivated and dismisses the notion that it would even be investigated. In fact, within hours of the killing the government provided evidence that Diaz was deeply linked to organized crime and had been killed by gang members to avenge a murder in which Diaz was implicated. An honest journalist, even if he disbelieved this version, would not ignore it as Schipani did.
Tellingly, the opposition has chosen to ignore rather than challenge the government’s story. The international press followed suit and declined to follow up when it became clear the Diaz murder would raise unwanted questions about the opposition. That general approach applies to all the worst coverage I’ve mentioned. The media – often relying on NGOs which are well entrenched in the Western establishment – faithfully serves any group the US government supports no matter how violent and anti-democratic.
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