There is a trend among international journalists covering the current Venezuelan crisis to project their own ideological, political, and cultural biases in their reports. This is to be expected and is natural, as true objectivity is an utopia. While professional journalists must maintain the facade of striving for objectivity, media outlets perceived as editorially unbiased continue to show examples of blatant subjectivity. I can think of a couple of recent examples: Associated Press and the BBC.
Does that look like 5,000 people? That was the case with the head of the AP office in Venezuela, Joshua Goodman, who, after being called out for his absolutely poor ability to estimate crowds, changed the number to 10,000 people.
That was not the only irresponsible report by Goodman. He returned a few days later to assert that Jimmy Carter had been “a mediator of the past political conflict in the deeply polarized South American nation,” and added that “some opposition members harshly criticized the Carter Center for validating a 2004 recall referendum that Chávez won amid allegations that the pre-voting process unfairly favored him.”
In Goodman’s copy, false statements made by Jimmy Carter in a press conference the day after the 2004 recall referendum went missing. Carter claimed to have witnessed the final vote tally at the polling station in Caracas, only to be refuted during the same press conference by then-OAS Secretary General César Gaviria, who asserted that no international electoral observer had been authorized to witness the counting by the electoral authorities.
Also lost in Goodman’s reporting were mentions of the Chávez regime’s utter disregard for basically all the matters agreed upon with the opposition in the “mediation” negotiated by Carter.
It also missed the already infamous meeting between Hugo Chávez and Gustavo Cisneros, mediated by Cisneros’ fishing friend, Carter, which secured the future of Venevisión at the expense of editorial independence and RCTV.
Goodman presents the opposition’s stance toward Carter, implying radicalism, but fails to view this as relevant in explaining the reasons for such distrust.
Goodman is not alone in this crusade to misinform and report inaccurately on what’s happening in Venezuela. He actually has some powerful allies, with the BBC being the most significant due to its global reach.
The student protests began in San Cristóbal, the capital city of the Táchira state. Under no circumstances can the population of San Cristóbal be classified as predominantly middle-class. Anyone who has visited would agree. The question is: has Goodman visited? Have the BBC reporters visited? If so, why have they chosen to present it as a bastion of the middle class? A middle-class bastion that elected a Chavista governor with 54% of the votes? Why is the crucial fact that the protesting students detained in San Cristóbal were sent to Coro, almost 900 km away, missing from their reports?
The British equivalent would be arresting someone in London to send them to a prison in Inverness. How is it that this never gets mentioned? How is it possible that Goodman, the BBC, and others missed that the directors of the Coro prison, known locally as Pranes, sided with the students and ensured their lives would be protected?
I guess that would destroy the shared and absurd argument that the students are “conservative” in their “perspective,” as the BBC claims. Imagine that, the heads of the criminal gangs who effectively control Venezuela’s notoriously hellish prisons providing protection to a group of “conservative” middle-class kids. Right…
Then we see how the political dynamics of the opposition are misinterpreted. Henrique Capriles is just great. He represents the “moderate” wing. Leopoldo Lopez, Maria Corina Machado, and Antonio Ledezma are all bad. They represent the “radical” wing. It is not mentioned that the protests were driven solely by students. It is not mentioned the false charges against Leopoldo López by the military. It is not mentioned López’s imprisonment in a military prison. It is not mentioned the conditions of López’s detention. It is not mentioned the violations of due process, such as holding hearings in a parked bus outside the prison. It is not mentioned the campaign to strip María Corina Machado of her parliamentary immunity by the same thugs (collectives) who terrorize and kill innocents indiscriminately and with total impunity. It is not mentioned Maduro’s threats to imprison democratically elected politicians, as he promised he would do, and did, with López. Not to mention statements by the Chavista Education Minister saying that the poor must stay poor, otherwise they would turn against the ‘revolution.’ Nothing. Because none of that fits well with preconceived ideas about what the Venezuelan crisis is. It’s a bit like what happens in Ukraine: American imperialism = BAD. Russian imperialism? Not a word from the left. As NIck Cohen brilliantly explained: “Western relativist left is only interested in the West, and can’t even think about ‘the atrocities of someone else’s.’” The world has to be reminded in every article, for instance, that Dilma Roussef was tortured. But similar nonsense, and worse, like sodomizing a student with a rifle or beating partially disabled people, doesn’t get any traction from the BBC and AP, or from the totally hypocritical Dilma, who today claims Brazil adheres to the principle of non-intervention. As if we didn’t know what Lula did in Venezuela in 2002, in Honduras in 2009, or what his embittered successor did in Paraguay in 2012.
In Goodman et al’s view, what we have here is a government supported by a majority of brown-skinned, poor, and marginalized people trying to survive a wave of violence unleashed by a minority of radical, conservative, educated white middle classes determined to seize control through undemocratic means and then hand over sovereignty to US interests. It doesn’t matter the brutality, the torture, and the killings of students and unarmed innocent civilians. It doesn’t matter the excessive use of military force to quell peaceful protests. It doesn’t matter the presence of a de facto Cuban occupation army. It doesn’t matter that Chavismo has never gained overall control of student bodies and university authorities in Venezuela, where votes are still conducted manually.
Chavismo needs/must advance this notion of being democratic. Since parts of their discourse align well with widespread anti-Americanism, the BBC, Goodman, and others do a fantastic job of misinforming the uninformed and the ignorant. They not only twist the crisis; they also twist the pieces. Not a single word would be read from this bunch about how the “moderate” wing is supported by totally corrupt Chavista bankers and political agents who are largely responsible for the current situation, or how Chavismo is grounded in impossible-to-be described as leftist boligarcs due to many of their dealings. However, no amount of manipulated subjectivity that passes for objective journalism can overcome social media. While the reach of the BBC and AP is undoubtedly global, it pales next to Twitter and Facebook, where the Venezuelan crisis is being reported in real time, unedited, by hundreds of thousands of citizen reporters armed with smartphones. In the days, months, and years to come, irresponsible reporting will be criticized more frequently. Maybe someone should pass that message to the irresponsible dinosaurs running the editorial desks of AP and the BBC.