The New York Slimes lie about Iraq death toll, then lie about Venezuela!

[Peace Patriot]

Robert Naiman demolishes the New York Slimes' latest attack on Venezuela, which has the front page headline"Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq..." but he misnames the publication "the New York Times." That paper doesn't really exist any more. It has been replaced by a haughty version of the Wall Street Urinal.

Here's Naiman. Enjoy!

NYT Exploits Own Iraq Death Toll Denial to Trash Venezuela
by Robert Naiman
The Huffington Post - August 24, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/nyt-exploits-own-iraq-dea_b_693041.html#

[Billy Burnett]

1. Repugs were comparing the death toll of US illegal attack on Iraq to D.C. and Chicago a while back.

And the NY Slimes ran with it hard for a while.

[bherrera]

2. This shows media misinformation at its best

The NY Times is wrong to imply the deaths in Iraq are low, but the Huffington Post also misleads the audience, because it compares data in Venezuela in recent years to the data in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, when the USA invasion and occupation were in very violent phases.

The NY Times was clearly seeking to make people read the article with the headline, but this does not disguise the fact, as reported by both the experts and the Venezuela government, that violence in Venezuela is a record, and the crime rate is causing a huge stress on the population. This crime appears to impact the poor, and the lower middle class, in such a way, that the government is losing popularity, and it has become a weapon used by the opposition, which points out correctly the crime rate has increased a lot during the 11 years Chavez has ruled Venezuela. This huge increase in crime is what makes me think this Chavez government is more one of thieves and corrupt politicians who kiss the feet of the autocratic Chavez, and not a group of true socialists. They are closer to the corrupt regime in Havana, which is also creating a sytem copied from the Chinese where the working class is exploited for the benefit of the party members and the multinationals and large corporations which align with the regime.

[SocialistJan]

3. Researchers on violence and the WHO consider Venezuela to be the most violent country on earth

in non war areas. I'm sure the US tend to underestimate violence in Iraq though.

The case of Venezuela is particular. Murders have been multiplied by 4 in 10 years, which must be a historical world record for a country in peace time.

[bherrera]

4. Venezuela crime rate is indeed very sad

I suspect this is caused by lack of attention by the government to the undelying causes. The Chavez government has been in power for many years now, therefore they can not use an excuse that it is somebody else's fault. Their governance is quite inefficient, the high crime rate, the lack of electricity, the poor economy and high inflation, and the other problems they have are a sign the country is ruled by people who lack intelligence, or are focused on stealing. This is similar to what happens in Africa.

[rabs]

5. Chavez hits back at the NYT (calls out Simon Romero)

in a Sunday speech Chavez warned about a coordinated, misinformation campaign against his government as the Sept. 26 elections approach by elements of the international media. He mentioned the Prisa media group from Spain, CNN Plus, CNN en espanol and the NYT.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Snip regarding NYT

Shameless string of lies

In his analysis, President Chavez says that as if the international attacks against Venezuela were not enough, the U.S. newspaper The New York Times published an article in which in their opinion “Venezuela is more dangerous than Iraq.” Something that it is obviously disproportionated and groundless.

“And as if this string of lies were not enough, past Monday we received another rocket from The New York Times, evidently in tune with the internal campaign promoted by the Venezuelan destabilizer private media regarding public safety. A mister named Simon Romero, who is allegedly correspondent of that newspaper in our country, titles his work: Venezuela es mas peligrosa que Irak (Venezuela Is More Dangerous Than Iraq).

“Who can really compare the violence unleashed in Iraq, as a result of a genocide invasion, where the tears of survivors will not, ever, be enough to calm their sorrow; with a structural insecurity problem in our country caused by the brutal inequalities inherited by our Government, which we are facing today in a firm and rigorous manner from a preventive and non repressive vision,” the Head of State explained.

“Nevertheless, you can not ask a minimal objectivity to certain low class journalism that is just focused on highlighting the most grotesque sensationalism,” Chavez added.

For all the reasons aforementioned and the evident smear campaign from world's counterrevolutionary sectors against Venezuela, President Chavez warned that these groups that follow U.S. interests will accentuate their attacks in the midst of the electoral process, because their only objective is to transform Venezuela again into a country “prostrated to Yankee empire"s orders.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Entire article (English) here, you will enjoy this one too.

http://avn.info.ve/node/14288

[bherrera]

6. But mr Chavez can not deny the statistics, can he?

The problem for Mr Chavez is his inability to deny the statistics, which are published by his own government agencies. And these statistics do show a continuous increase in the crime rate, including murders, rapes and other violent crimes, during the 11 years Mr Chavez has been in power.

Increases in violent crime are associated with the rise of a cohort of young males who tend towards violent crime for reasons identified by experts such as: lack of proper work opportunity, sense of impunity, the availability of weapons, and lack of police. Notice I ordered these in what I think is the most important factors.

I suspect the employment figures in Venezuela are not true, and unemployment amongst the young males is higher than stated by the government agencies. The sense of impunity is caused by a justice system which fails to capture and give a speedy and fair trial to those accused. This is evident in Venezuela, where the justice system is a mess, jails are crowded, and are dantesque.

The availability of weapons is well known, they have no gun control that means anything, and young males are armed in the slum areas with a lot of weapons. Finally, the police are weak and corrupt. These are all problems the government can work on, but has failed to do. Their performance has been so poor, the crime rate has increased over the years. This is a troubling sign, and tells the discerning person that Chavez' government is not really focused on the welfare of the poor, because it is the poor people who suffer the most when a violent crime wave happens like it is happening in Venezuela.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Simon Romero has been a magnet for ridicule for years. He deserves it completely.

As we thank the N.Y. Times for their hideous female political liar, Judith Miller, who singlehandedly attempted to profoundly misinform the entire world, we also have had a trio of slimy, Black Lagoon unethical scums at the N.Y. Times covering Latin America, who've spread their filth since Hugo Chavez was elected.

Here's whaat F.A.I.R. (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) has to say about Simon Romero:

NYT vs. Venezuela's Election Results
11/27/2008 by Isabel Macdonald

Anyone who followed the results of Venezuela's regional elections last Sunday will know that President Hugo Chavez's party won 17 out of 22 contests up for grabs, garnering 52.5 percent of the popular vote to the opposition's 41.1 percent. Unless, that is, they were relying on New York Times Latin America correspondent Simon Romero.

Despite a well-documented pattern of media misinformation about Chavez, many media outlets, including L.A. Times and CNN, conceded the fact of Chavez allies' victory in Sunday's races.

But not Romero!

Yesterday, the Times published an article by Romero titled, "Chavez Supporters Suffer Defeat in State and Regional Races."

The article's lede:

President Hugo Chávez’s supporters suffered a stinging defeat in several state and municipal races on Sunday, with the opposition retaining power in oil-rich Zulia, the country’s most populous state, and winning crucial races here in the capital.

Today, the Times ran a follow-up piece penned by Romero under the headline "Once Considered Invincible, Chavez Takes a Blow," as well as an editorial that argued that "In Sunday's state and municipal elections Venezuelans showed just how fed up they are with his government's authoritarianism and incompetence."

The article's lede:

President Hugo Chávez’s supporters suffered a stinging defeat in several state and municipal races on Sunday, with the opposition retaining power in oil-rich Zulia, the country’s most populous state, and winning crucial races here in the capital.

Today, the Times ran a follow-up piece penned by Romero under the headline "Once Considered Invincible, Chavez Takes a Blow," as well as an editorial that argued that "In Sunday's state and municipal elections Venezuelans showed just how fed up they are with his government's authoritarianism and incompetence."

More:
http://www.fair.org/blog/2008/11/27/nyt-v-venezuelas-election-results/

~~~~~

New York Times Misleads Readers on Drug War in Bolivia
by Kathryn Ledebur
Sep 4 2008

Although New York Times reporter Simon Romero attempts to characterize the truly complex relationship between Bolivia and the United States in "Bolivia is an Uneasy Ally as U.S. Presses Drug War," (NYT, 8/29/09) the article contains multiple inaccuracies and misleading information. It is crucial to have a clear vision of the intricacies of the coca issue in Bolivia to understand it.

More:
http://www.mediaaccuracy.org/node/64

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Colombia and Venezuela: Testing the Propaganda Model
Dec 19 2008
Kevin Young – Media Accuracy on Latin America (MALA)

~snip~
In May and June 2007, the Times and the Post together published 19 articles dealing with the Chávez government’s nonrenewal of the RCTV license, plus two editorial columns strongly condemning the Venezuelan government’s decision. The Times’ May 27 report described a decisive “shift in media” under Chávez, noting the emergence of “a new media elite” composed of Chávez’s “ideological devotees,” although it did acknowledge that “most news organizations in Venezuela remain in private hands.” The next day Times correspondent Simon Romero reported that “thousands of protesters” supporting RCTV filled the streets of the capital Caracas before “the police dispersed by firing tear gas into demonstrations.”

Even more so than the Times’, the Post’s coverage tended to glorify the protesters as freedom fighters confronting the repression of the Chávez government. During the two-week stretch immediately before and after RCTV went off the airwaves, the Post featured six updates in its World in Brief section that all cast Chávez in a decidedly autocratic light. Several also portrayed government forces as having violently repressed the protests in Caracas. The May 29 update reported that “

olice fired tear gas and plastic bullets into a crowd of about 5,000,” but the report did not mention that many of the protesters had themselves committed acts of violence. One later update noted that the protests were “sometimes violent” and another mentioned that “t least 30 were charged with violent acts.”

Neither paper reported the well-documented fact that RCTV had lent vocal support to an authoritarian military coup against the democratically elected Chávez administration—comparable to NBC or CBS advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. RCTV was frequently described as a “dissident network” or an “opposition TV station” without any mention of its support for the coup. When news reports and opinion pieces did mention this fact, they usually qualified it by saying that Chávez claimed RCTV had supported the coup. A typical example in the Post: “Authorities here say that RCTV supported a coup that dislodged Chávez for two days in 2002.” By framing RCTV’s support for the coup as a mere allegation of the Venezuelan government—rather than as a matter of fact—the newspapers implied that the charge against RCTV could simply be dismissed by outside observers.

Unfortunately, we cannot compare this coverage of the RCTV affair to the papers’ coverage of the Inravisión scandal in Colombia: The latter event received not a single mention in either paper.

*

The results for the second of the two case studies are similar. Chávez’s package of social and political reforms later in 2007 was dealt predictable treatment in the U.S. press prior to its defeat by popular referendum in December, with most media attention focusing on opposition protests in the lead-up to the vote. The Times painted a romantic portrait of student leader Yon Goicoechea that recalled stories of underground dissidents in the Eastern bloc: “He changes cellphones every few days. After receiving dozens of death threats, he moves among the apartments of friends here each day in search of a safe place to sleep.” Two days before, on November 8, the Times had reported that “a march by tens of thousands of students to the Supreme Court” was met by masked gunmen who injured two people. The report made little attempt to avoid giving the impression that the gunmen were sent by the government, simply quoting a government official as saying that “we do not know what faction they belong to.” After the December 2 referendum, four more Times articles on the issue appeared in eight days, all conveying similar impressions.

Much of the coverage in both papers implied or even stated explicitly that the proposal, if approved, would install Chávez as “de facto president for life.” Before the vote Post columnist Jackson Diehl wrote indignantly that “Chávez will become the presumptive president-for-life of a new autocracy.” The Times’ Roger Cohen went a step further, comparing Chávez to fascist dictators of the past because of his “grab for socialist-emperor status.” The Times. editorial page registered its full agreement. In their one editorial, titled “Saying No to Chavez,” the editors expressed shock at the “breathtaking gall of Mr. Chavez’s latest lunge for power,” echoing Times reports that “thousands of university students have taken to the streets to protest, facing down armed Chavista thugs.” The December 4 editorial compared Chávez to Vladimir Putin of Russia and applauded the courage of Venezuelan voters for having defeated Chávez’s proposal.

Nor was this type of language limited to editorial columns; news reports often spoke of “constitutional changes that, if approved by voters on Sunday, could extend (Chávez’s) presidency for life.” Post correspondent Juan Forero wrote a total of eight reports dealing with Chávez’s proposal to eliminate term limits. In his November 29 article Forero opened by saying that the upcoming referendum vote “could extend (Chávez’s) presidency for life.” In the same piece he interviewed an opponent of the proposal, and then seemed to agree with his interviewee that its passage “would effectively turn Venezuela into a dictatorship run at the whim of one man.” In case Forero’s reportage left any doubt about the Post’s position on the vote, the editors published two editorials and five op-eds condemning Chávez. Among the op-ed writers was Donald Rumsfeld, who recommended passage of the Colombian “free trade” agreement as the best method of undermining Chávez; meanwhile the Post’s own Charles Lane compared Chávez to Stalin, Mao, and other “high modernists,” and Jackson Diehl, without citing any evidence, accused the Venezuelan government of “overt violence that has included the gunning down of student protesters.”

Most reports neglected to mention that Chávez would still have to be elected for each successive term. Moreover, none mentioned that U.S. allies like Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom have no term limits for their prime ministers, or that the United States itself did not establish presidential term limits until 1951. And only one noted that Colombia’s Uribe was at that very same time (November 2007) thinking of again extending his own term limits, after already having done so in 2005.

More:
https://nacla.org/node/5344

~~~~~

Media, Propaganda and Venezuela

~snip~
Reporting on the ongoing issues, such as the protests and Chavez’s economic policies in Venezuela have shown similar signs of one-sidedness, from both the mainstream media of western countries such as the U.S. and U.K., and from Venezuela’s own elite anti-Chavez media, which “controls 95% of the airwaves and has a near-monopoly over newsprint, and … played a major part in the failed attempt to overthrow the president, Hugo Chavez, in April 2002…. The media is still directly encouraging dissident elements to overthrow the democratically elected president—if necessary by force.”

Charles Hardy, who lived in Venezuela for some 19 years and worked with the poor notes that “A great difference exists between what one reads in the U.S. newspapers and what one hears in the barrios and villages of Venezuela, places where the elite do not tread. Adults are entering literacy programs, senior citizens are at last receiving their pensions, and children are not charged registration to enter the public schools. Health care and housing have improved dramatically.” Reading mainstream versions, you would not get this picture.

More:
http://www.globalissues.org/article/403/media-propaganda-and-venezuela#USInvolvementinVenezuelanCoup

~~~~~

CIA Spins spider's web vs. Cuba and Venezuela

~snip~
On Aug. 25, for example, a few newspapers throughout Latin America, among them La Nacion of Buenos Aires, carried an article by Simon Romero of Caracas claiming that Venezuela has collaborated with Iran in a uranium enrichment program.

Journalists working with that paper and others told the Association of Media Professionals in Argentina that the CIA had fostered that line. They alleged that U.S. "diplomats" had offered them bribes to present the U.S. side in stories covering Venezuela's admission into the Mercosur trade group and Brazilian President Lula da Silva's bid for re-election in October.

The exposé by Victor Ego Ducrotto, appearing on the Rebelion web site on Aug. 25, claimed that CIA personnel worked "elbow to elbow" with the representatives of the right-wing Inter American Press Society, based in Miami.

More:
http://www.spinwatch.org/component/content/article/271-propaganda/3475-cia-spins-spiders-web-vs-cuba-and-venezuela

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http://2.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_7Se7iswAanA/SldLT7_t-kI/AAAAAAAAIQg/kP5iCAx6e8c/s400/Simon+Romero.jpg

Simon Romero, New York Times