Venezuela’s Referendum: Media’s Double Standards

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Saturday, February 14, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Venezuela’s Referendum: Media’s Double Standards

by Steve Rendall & Isabel Macdonald

With Sunday's Venezuelan referendum on term limits, we can expect to hear a lot about Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s “plan to become president for life” and its reflection on "Venezuela's battered democracy"--as the New York Times editors put it around the time of Venezuela’s last (failed) term limits referendum.

But when Colombian President Álvaro Uribe's efforts to lift term limits succeeded in 2005, the U.S. media took little notice, and Uribe's reputation as the U.S.'s favorite 'democrat' in the region remained intact.

In Colombia, the lifting of term limits was a big story, in good part because the Colombian courts have sentenced the congress member who cast the deciding vote on the amendment to almost four years in prison for taking bribes from Uribe aides (he knew nothing, of course) in exchange for her vote. And though Uribe supporters are collecting signatures to get him on the ballot for 2010 elections, the bribery affair has caused Colombian courts to raise questions about Uribe’s eligibility.

Yet Uribe’s scandal-ridden term limits law was treated as far less newsworthy by U.S. editors than the Venezuelan government’s moves to put the question of term limits to the popular ballot. A search of “Álvaro Uribe and “term limits” in the Nexis database of U.S. newspapers and wires turns up 60 articles, in contrast to 1003 articles about Chávez and term limits. A spot check reveals that even the articles mentioning Uribe and “term limits” were often about Chávez's efforts to lift term limits, not Uribe's.

Similarly, 286 articles mentioned both Chávez and “president for life,” while only 29 articles mention Uribe and that epithet--but virtually all of those 29 were again referring to Chávez's perceived power grabs, not Uribe's. (One Associated Press story did compare Uribe to Chávez, but didn’t quite apply the term to Uribe: “The wonkish, diminutive but tirelessly tenacious politician , who turned 56 on Friday, has been cagey on that score. Those who oppose the idea say it would put him in league with his continental rival, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who has been widely branded autocratic for doing his utmost to try to stay president for life.")

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/14-6

[Peace Patriot]

1. Here's another great article on the twisted lies of our corporate media about Venezuela...

Francisco Toro and Venezuela’s “Savage” Democracy

February 11th 2009, by Samuel Grove - Red Pepper Venezuela Blog

In a recent online debate about the 10th anniversary of Hugo Chávez's presidency in Venezuela Francisco Toro described what he saw as the corrupting of Venezuela's democracy and general descent into authoritarianism. While Toro's conception of democracy appears at first glance to be an orthodox one, on closer inspection it becomes highly idiosyncratic and sheds a great deal of light both on the democratic revolution taking place in Venezuela and the type of opposition it has had to confront.

The ‘anti-democratic' charge is one frequently levelled at Chavez by commentators and groups (and more controversially an international human rights organisation). However, it has to be conceded, even by those making this charge, that it is counterintuitive to say the least. Under Chavez, Venezuelans have gone to the polls a record number of times. In the most recent municipal elections Chavez's PSUV received an impressive 52.5% of votes cast and won 17 of 22 governorships in the process. Participation was 65% (unheard of in western democracies for this type of election), a figure which tallies with recent findings of the respected polling agency Latinobarómetro which reported that satisfaction with democracy in Venezuela was the second highest in the region. So the anti-democratic charge has nothing to do either with the degree of public consultation or public endorsement. (MORE)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4195#comment-form

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Grove skewers this guy, Toro, ten different ways. It is a pleasure to read. The most mind-boggling facet of the corpo/fascist attack on Venezuela's democracy is that, according to them, the more democratic Venezuela is, the more UN-democratic it is. Try to wrap your mind around that. More democracy = less democracy. This is more than lying. It is seriously perverted, even psychotic, in a way that only sick levels of corporate power can bring about.