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Many
people read the London based Independent newspaper
because among its reporters is the outstanding Robert
Fisk. The anti-war stance of the newspaper on Iraq
and its stance on genetically manipulated foods and
other environmental issues may give the impression
that the Independent is a responsible newspaper across
the board. But a look at its coverage of Venezuela
reveals the same old story of distortion, omission
and deceit on US intervention in Latin America that
one finds everywhere else in the corporate media.
It
may be worth pointing out that the owner of the UK
Independent is Tony O'Reilly, one of Ireland's most
prominent businessmen, formerly head of H.J. Heinz.
H.J. Heinz heiress Teresa Heinz is married to Democratic
Presidential candidate John Kerry. Also of note is
that O'Reilly shares philanthropic concerns through
the Ireland Fund with fellow fund member Peter Sutherland,
former GATT and World Trade Organization chief, also
chairman of oil giant BP-Amoco.1
It would be foolish to expect their corporate philantropy
to extend to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.
Three
important stories on Venezuela have appeared in the
Independent during March.2 One
by Phil Gunson on March 2nd, one by Andrew Buncombe
on March 13th and one by Rupert Cornwell on March
20th. Phil Gunson's article is crude anti-Chavez propaganda.
Buncombe's is a straightforward account of US funding
for the Venezuelan opposition. Cornwell's is a more
insidious anti-Chavez piece employing classic BBC-style
bonhomie and "balance". Both pieces depend
on ignoring crucial facts.
Chavez
rubbished among Gunson's garbage
The
keynote in Gunson's piece - which is more of an opinion
piece despite appearing on the news pages - comes
in the second paragraph: "Three months after
the opposition umbrella group, the Democratic Co-ordinator
(CD), gathered more than three million signatures
for a referendum against the leftist President Hugo
Chavez, Venezuela's electoral authority was poised
to reject the petition.
The
only way to revive the referendum, guaranteed under
Mr Chavez's 1999 constitution, would be for hundreds
of thousands of signatories to reaffirm their intentions
- an option that seemed certain to be rejected by
the CD as impractical."
On
the basis of a whimsical notion, Phil Gunson attributes
to himself the authority to judge the number of signatures
collected. He says nothing about the circumstances
of the recall vote - which no European country would
have regarded as acceptable. For example, voting lists
were taken from the voting stations by opposition
party representatives so as to register votes by going
from house to house. The Chavez government accepted
that and other abnormal voting procedures, presumably
so as to quit the opposition of any excuse were they
to have lost the vote.
In
the event the opposition failed to collect the necessary
2.4 million clearly valid votes they needed. They
only got 1.8 million votes ratified by the national
electoral council. 600.000 votes were disqualified
outright by the electoral council as being obviously
invalid. A further 800,000 thousand votes are in question,
mainly because many of the signature forms presented
as valid share identical handwriting. These questionable
votes are now to be made available in voting stations
to allow the people to whom the signatures were attributed
a second chance to confirm their vote. Contrary to
Gunson's comment, the constitutional procedure for
the confirmation process is no more impractical than
the original recall vote itself.
Gunson's
article then notes the widespread violent protests
by the US-funded Venezuelan opposition. The impression
given in his article is of broad based popular opposition
to an oppressive unpopular regime. But he offers no
support for any of his assertions. This example of
weasel-like "sourcing" gives the flavour:
"Election observers from the Atlanta-based Carter
Centre and the Organisation of American States (OAS)
were preparing to leave, convinced - say diplomatic
sources - that the process has been manipulated by
the electoral authority, on whose board the government
has a majority of three to two."
Gunson
failed to get the answers he wanted from the Carter
Centre or from the OAS, so he resorted to unattributed
"diplomatic sources". What might count as
"diplomatic sources" for Phil Gunson is
unclear - two US embassy staff? Or one US embassy
Information Service hack and a Colombian embassy representative
of death squad-friendly President Alvaro Uribe? An
impartial reader cannot tell.
Similarly,
in the penultimate paragraph Gunson refers to Chavez's
"increasing authoritarianism" with nothing
to support this description of the Venezuelan President.
One just has to recall the savage repression of peaceful
protest in Miami around the FTAA meeting there last
year to imagine what measures might be taken against
demonstrators throwing petrol bombs and shooting civilians
in the US. But in the alchemist's transformation of
dross into sensationalism worked by Phil Gunson, security
measures applied with minimum force in Venezuela against
murderous assaults by the anti-democratic opposition
become "increasing authoritarianism".
Gunson's
report could be dismissed for the pap that it is and
forgotten were it not part of an international media
campaign to disparage and demonize Hugo Chavez and
to intervene in Venezuela's internal affairs. The
campaign gives aid and comfort to the anti-democratic
US-funded opposition. The crisis in Venezuela stems
from the opposition's lack of electoral support. They
tried to rig the recall vote and became bogged down
in constitutional process. Then they instigated violent
insurrection to try and force the issue, so far without
success. These basic facts are entirely absent from
Gunson's report.
Chavez
re-historied - the Buncombe version
Andrew
Buncombe's article may well have been an attempt by
the Independent to make good Gunson's crude bodge.
Ostensibly, Buncombe highlights US funding for the
Venezuelan opposition through the CIA's ugly sister,
the National Endowment for Democracy. But his piece
plays its part in the editorial management of perceptions
about Venezuela against President Chavez. The final
paragraph reads: "In recent days, Caracas and
other cities have been rocked by demonstrations in
support of the recall vote. Those intensified after
the supposedly independent elections council ruled
that government opponents lacked enough total signatures
to force the vote. There have also been large and
vociferous marches by thousands of supporters of the
president who oppose the vote."
Note
here the "supposedly independent elections council".
In fact, the electoral council was chosen by the Venezuelan
Supreme Court, not by the government or the government
controlled legislature. Would Buncombe dare to describe
the US Republican-packed Supremes as the "supposedly
independent Supreme Court"? Hardly. But it's
good enough when you're writing about Venezuela. And
then that bogus chimera "balance" rears
one of its many heads. Buncombe reports the anti-Chavez
demonstrations and the pro-government march as if
they were somehow equal manifestations of political
opinion in the country.
In
fact, the limited insurrectionist outbreaks, directly
encouraged and heavily hyped by the uncensored Venezuelan
media under Gunson's "increasingly authoritarian"
Chavez, were rejected even by the opposition's own
middle class supporters. (No one likes paid riff-raff
burning tyres and shooting people at the bottom of
their smart driveways.) Whereas the pro-government
demonstration brought out half a million Chavez supporters
- a degree of magnitude far greater than the "thousands"
reported by Buncombe. So even in pieces that seem
to offer a respite from the unremitting demonization
of Hugo Chavez, history is retouched to serve mainstream
media inventions about events in Venezuela.
Chavez
weighed in the Cornwell Balance
Balance
plays an enticingly plausible role for the unwary
in Rupert Cornwell's piece, which presents information
about current events in Venezuela through a profile
of President Chavez. The article is cleverly done,
several degrees more sophisticated than Phil Gunson's
mediocre hatchet job. Anyone unfamiliar with Venezuelan
affairs would leave it thinking what an agreeable
fellow Cornwell must be and what an unstable jerk
those bewildering Venezuelans elected to be their
President.
But
the giveaway comes in the first paragraph. Noting
Washington's hemispheric concerns, Cornwell writes
of Fidel Castro "as far as can be judged, that
particular tormentor of the US is as firmly in the
saddle as ever." So, even taking into account
the flippancy, which serves it's purpose here by distracting
the reader from the sense of what is being said, the
perspective is clear. It is Cuba's Castro who is the
aggressive tormentor. Never mind 40 years of US funded
and organized sabotage, economic blockade and terrorist
attacks that have claimed thousands of Cubans as well
as foreign tourists among their victims. It is poor
old Washington and the United States that deserve
our sympathy.
The
rest of the article flows naturally and fluently from
that perspective. Cornwell presents Venezuela as a
country in social crisis and "on the brink of
civil war". How the fractured overwhelmingly
middle class Venezuelan opposition has suddenly metamorphosed
into a coherent broadly based force capable of mounting
effective organized military action is a phenomenon
that exists only in Cornwell's own prose and almost
certainly in the future planning of the State Department
and the CIA. Never mind, Cornwell goes on. Chavez
"has divided his country by class and race"
- as if Venezuela's has not been precisely the history
of a country ruthlessly dominated by a wealthy white
elite who kept the poor non-white majority in miserable
poverty with corrupt, undemocratic politics and brutal
repression. In Cornwell's version it is wanton Chavez
who has divided the country.
Cornwell
relates, "In 1992, as economic crisis and social
unrest gripped the country, he made his first attempt
to seize power..." This account leaves out the
context in which the Andres Perez government of the
time, following riots against disastrous IMF imposed
reforms, oversaw the massacre and disappearance of
around 3000 people. Cornwell's "economic crisis
and social unrest" reinforces the racist stereotype
of unstable Latins who can't run their own countries.
In fact the 1992 coup was a response to the endless
interference in Venezuela's internal affairs by the
United States and its dogsbodies, the IMF and the
World Bank.
Another
suave way Cornwell uses to undermine Chavez is to
make invidious comparisons with Salvador Allende and
Juan Peron, as if Chavez is already doomed to meet
one or other of their fates. Cornwell tends to sneer
at Chavez's "narcissistic" use of TV to
reach his political consituency. But in fact Chavez
uses TV for his political purposes in a very similar
way to the Venezuelan opposition - both talk dramatically
and intimately to camera as if speaking directly to
an audience at a political meeting. Anyone who has
not watched Venezuelan TV would not know that. Meretriciously,
Cornwell makes Chavez seem a poseur.
Cornwell
quotes Larry Binns of the Council for Hemispheric
Affairs in Washington. Binns complains that Chavez
is "far too dependent on the military."
Ah, so Chavez must surely be a militarist despot....
or then again, maybe he just doesn't want to end up
like Salvador Allende. Allende died because he trusted
the army. The army murdered him. Chavez isn't making
the same mistake. So, in Cornwell-speak he must be
described (this time by an attributed source because
Cornwell is a better journalist than Phil Gunson)
as "far too dependent on the military" at
the same time as Chavez's extrovert character is unfavourably
contrasted against the more sober demeanour of Allende.
The
"Independent"'s incredible shrinking masses
Recounting
the April 2002 coup, Cornwell has the hundreds of
thousands of Chavez supporters that defeated the US
managed putsch shrink- just as in Buncombe's report
- to mere "thousands". The effort in all
these pieces is to minimize the massive popular support
enjoyed by Chavez and to magnify the militant opposition
- which is in many ways a virtual creation of the
corporate owned Venezuelan media. US involvement in
the 2002 coup becomes just some funding and some verbal
encouragement from White House officials Roger Noriega
and Otto Reich. In fact, US war ships entered Venezuelan
territorial waters. US military helicopters landed
in at least one Venezuelan airport. Venezuelan terrorists
have been and probably continue to be trained at camps
in Florida to carry out terror attacks against targets
in their country 3 All this
information is available and has been for some time.
But it does not inform the reports that appear in
the Independent.
Also
in Cornwell's account, Chavez "has failed his
country with his erratic and sometimes blundering
style, and his inability to deliver on promises."
As if the US inspired April 2002 coup never happened.
As if the crippling economic sabotage inflicted by
the business classes and their media allies never
happened. As if the opposition controlled Central
Bank's mis-management of inflationary measures were
benign. As if the management strike in the country's
nationalised petrol company had no effect. But, of
course, it is Chavez who has failed his country, Chavez
who has failed to deliver on his promises. For Cornwell's
narrative, it seems, the murderous and destructive
Venezuelan opposition are innocent children who fail
to figure as significant actors.
Non-existent
bitter battles
And
now, Cornwell writes, "crisis looms, as the president
wages a bitter battle with the Venezuelan Supreme
Court to prevent a recall vote that could legally
drive him from office. If a vote were held today,
almost certainly that would happen." In fact,
the Chavez administration has repeatedly publicly
declared that it will accept whatever verdict the
Supreme Court hands down. So where is this "bitter
battle"?
If
Cornwell is so sure that Chavez would lose a new election
why is it that the opposition had to resort to systematic
fraud in order to try and win the recall vote? Why
is it that only 1.8 million votes were ratified by
the electoral authority while a further 800,000 have
had to be submitted for confirmation beacuse most
of them appear in identical handwriting? Oh, but of
course, we are now back to Andrew Buncombe and the
"supposedly independent elections council"-
a body chosen by the Venezuelan Supreme Court with
whom Cornwell alleges President Chavez is engaged
in a "bitter battle". The editorial manipulation
over the three articles is clear.
Gunson,
Buncombe and Cornwell and their editors operate from
assumptions that tacitly support the aggressive imperialist
policies of the US while apparently maintaining a
certain distance or even, occasionally, saying the
opposite. Through innuendo, distortion and omission
they misrepresent the Venezuelan government's efforts
to resist US intervention in the country's internal
affairs. Whatever may be the truth about Hugo Chavez
the man is indeed a matter of interpretation. On the
other hand, no one seeking factual coverage of events
in Venezuela will find it in the Independent.
There
is no need to resort to deep Chomskyian analysis of
what's going on in the media on Venezuela. Gunson,
Buncombe and Cornwell and every other journalist at
work in the international corporate media have the
same access to the Internet as anyone else. The fact
that their reporting on Venezuela is so abysmally
prejudiced may well simply be because they are biased
and lazy. If Robert Fisk can deliver factual coverage
on Iraq, his Independent colleagues can well do it
on Venezuela. They don't.
Toni
Solo is an activist based in Central America. Contact:
tonisolo01@yahoo.com
NOTES
1. US oil giant Occidental Petroleum has
a deal with BP-Amoco on exploitation rights in land
of the U'wa people, and Catatumbo on the Venezuelan-Colombian
border. The area has been militarised and serves
as a platform for Colombian army and paramilitary
provocations against Venezuela. "Plan Colombia:
Throwing Gasoline on a Fire", Héctor
Mondragón, 2000 Translated by Jens Nielson
and Justin Podur, August 2001
2. "Venezuelans use people power to
attack Chavez", Phil Gunson, Independent, 2nd
March 2004
"US revealed to be secretly funding opponents
of Chavez", Andrew Buncombe, 13th March 2004
"Hugo Chavez: Champion of the poor, or just
another despot?", Rupert Cornwell, Independent,
20th March 2004
3. ''Waiting for a response to U.S.-based
terrorists'' Dozthor Zurlent, Yellow Times, October
13, 2003.
"Chavez Accuses CIA as Bombings Rock Venezuela",
Agence France-Presse, 11 October 2003. Both Otto
Reich and the US ambassador to Venezuela Charles
Shapiro are veterans of the coup against Allende.
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