How The Associated Press (AP) Gutted Its Own Scoop On The Venezuelan Coup D'etat

[Judi Lynn]

How The Associated Press (AP) Gutted Its Own Scoop On The Venezuelan Coup D'etat
By Jared Israel
www.emperors-clothes.com


Does the Western media deliberately distort the news to serve the interests of the foreign policy establishments of the NATO countries, especially the US? Based on much research, Emperor's Clothes says: yes, but not entirely.

Journalists sometimes - perhaps often - write accurate pieces. However, when the issues are important, foreign policy stories get edited or replaced, with the end result supporting a slant which is so consistently in tune with the long-term goals of the US foreign policy elite that it is possible, by analyzing news stories, to predict positions which will be adopted by the US government. That is partly how we made the predictions in the article, "Why Does Washington Want Afghanistan?" Alas, those predictions have proven true. (1)

Every day we test the above-stated thesis using the excellent Lexis search engine. It enables us to scan millions of newspaper articles and TV news transcripts in seconds. We can focus on particular dates or periods of time. We can check for the presence or absence of certain words or phrases. In this way, we can fashion an hypothesis and test it - see if we are right about the line being taken by most or all the media. Or we can just "go fishing" and see what we find.

On April 13th, the Associated Press published what is by far the best - indeed, from what I've seen, the only - mainstream article reporting the massive police terror against pro-Chavez Venezuelans after the recent coup d'etat. It was a scoop. Below I have posted this dispatch, written by Christopher Toothaker.

Soon after AP sent out the Toothaker dispatch, they released a revised dispatch without Toothaker's account of police terror in poor neighborhoods. The new dispatch, by Andrew Selsky, retained only one thing from the original: the first part of an important paragraph was the same, but the second part was completely rewritten to reverse the meaning. All the original material in the Toothaker dispatch was removed. AP gutted their scoop.

AP dispatches are sent out to news media "outlets" around the world. Thus by April 14th, most of the important newspapers and TV stations had received two very different AP dispatches. The first (Toothaker) was detailed and refuted the official line on what happened in Venezuela. The second (Selsky) was general and supported the official line. This is as close to a scientific experiment as one could fashion to test our thesis that key media "outlets" censor themselves to support the US establishment's agenda.

More:
http://www.trinicenter.com/world/venez/lessons8.shtml

[DainBramaged]

1. There was a coup?

:wtf:

Chavez Visits Cuba, Holds Talks With Castro Brothers

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrived in Cuba on an unannounced visit on Wednesday and held talks with revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother and current President Raul Castro, according to Cuban state media.

During Chavez's five-hour-long private meeting with Fidel Castro, the two leaders reportedly discussed Castro's earlier warnings about the serious risks of an impending nuclear war in the Middle East.

After the meeting, Chavez expressed satisfaction at Castro's "magnificent" health, and acknowledged the Cuban revolutionary's role in "achieving a universal awareness to prevent a conflagration of incalculable consequences to mankind."

http://www.rttnews.com/Content/MarketSensitiveNews.aspx?Id=1402737&SM=1

[Judi Lynn]

2. Yes, actually. There was also a tremendous DU poster living in Caracas at the time

who went online to DU throughout the ordeal and gave us continuing comments, observations. He had an enormous number of posters reading every word he had to share with us during those days.

We will NEVER forget the priviledge of having a witness to this historic event, the only time in modern history that a people overturned a violent coup, a kidnapping of their elected President even as the opposition blacked out ALL references to the coup, and silenced the only people's news sources, as in CatiaTV. Their equipment was removed, and the workeers in the station imprisoned, tortured.

The private media completely enforced a news blackout so the people living in the city had NO IDEA what had happened to their elected President. Pena also took apart independent radio stations, so all voices other than the oligarchs' private radio, tv stations and newspapers were eliminated.

At some point the people of Caracas kept working to get the radio stations back up and running and then they were able to notify the citizens their President had been kidnapped at gun point and was being held prisoner.

They poured into the streets, massing around the stolen Presidential Palace, and refused to leave. In time the coup operators had only the choice of murdering ever man, woman, child there and invite attention from the the more decent governments and stand trial for massive crimes against humanity, or restoring the man to the office for which he was elected.

Thank you for your obvious well-intentioned, honest question.

~~~~~
As a note to the serious DU'ers who've been watching Venezuelan events all this time, I just found a bit of information I have NEVER known before now! Caracas' old, virulently, rabid anti-Chavez mayor, Alfredo Pena, is or was the owner of El Nacional, the anti-Chavez rag which just ran the full page photos of the morgue in Caracas from a series of images made in 2006. They did this in the run-up to September's national election! Some poster put that topic in motion here last week, remember? It showed giant images of naked, dead people, including a CHILD for people to see passing news stands and take home to their families. It dealt with the intention to lay all these naked, somewhat unpleasant looking dead people at the feet of the President of Venezuela.

Here's the reference to ex-mayor Pena:

Community TV Illegally Shut Down in Venezuela
17 Jul 2003 16:49 GMT

The Caracas metropolitan police raided and shut down Community Catia TV this week. The police are controlled by mayor Alfredo Pena, an enemy of democratically elected President Hugo Chavez. Catia TV is an alternative media project from a poor neighborhood which denounces the continuous conspiracies of the Venezuelan oligarchy, allied with the US and Spanish Governments, to overthrow the democratic regime. Their reports on corruption scandals and the fascist methods of the oligarchs angered mayor Pena and prompted him to brutally raid and silence this alternative media without a judicial order.
Pena - who happens to be the owner of a major Venezuelan newspaper, El Nacional - was one of the leaders of the failed, CIA-backed military coup that overthrew President Chavez for only one day in April 2002. The following day, the Caracas poor, who enthusiastically support Chavez, descended from the shantytowns located on the hills, defeated the plotters with the help of loyal troops and saved the President's life.

Messages of protest can be sent to mayor Pena.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:s0ee_QD37dgJ:www.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/109249.shtml+Catia+tv+closed+Alfredo+Pena&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


As you can imagine, it's not the PRESIDENT of Venezuela who's in charge of the cities' police departments, and their law enforcement, but rather the MAYORS of those places, and as in the case of Caracas, it's easy to see at a glance what kind of MAYOR Caracas has had as the head of its law enforcement.

[pnorman]

3. K & R for careful study later.

n/t