Venezuelan TV Host Mario Silva Responds to The Economist’s False Accusations
By MARIO SILVA - THE RAZORBLADE, August 18th 2011http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6432--------------------
After eviscerating The Economyth (aka, The Economist) in detail on specific lies that it published about Silva, such as this one involving RCTV...
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1- It is false and was proven so at the time with video footage and other material shown before the people of Venezuela, that I ever insinuated the actress Norkys Batista owed her success to “sexual favors”. The event you cite in your article was part of a systematic campaign run by the Venezuelan TV channel RCTV against the Bolivarian Revolution and against those of us who denounced the role the media played in the April 2002 coup d’etat in our country. RCTV’s campaign became ruthless after it was announced their broadcasting license would not be renewed in 2007. Your using that false claim is a blatant manipulation of fact.--
...Silva goes after them on their overall egregious bias, disinformation and lies about the Latin American Left and the Chavez government in particular:
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It’s alarming that you, The Economist, would echo just one side of the case, because this evidences an ethical violation of the media’s duty to investigate, consult, double-check sources, fact-check and verify information before publishing. Moreover, you appear to take the story as an “inalterable truth”, exercising a role as an accomplice in an international campaign orchestrated against Venezuela.--
...and I am SO GLAD to see this articulated, because I had myself been noticing how bad The Economist is--and strongly feel that it deserves a new name among people interested in the truth and in good journalism: The EconoMYTH. Like AP (the Associated Pukes), the NYT (the New York Slimes), the WSJ (the Wall Street Urinal) and the rest of the corpo-fascist press, it is ALWAYS biased toward corporate/war profiteer interests when it comes to Latin America. It is unvarying. There is no other viewpoint presented. And, like the rest, the bias goes further than this, into lying and disinformation. The Economyth, like the rest, has become completely unreliable on this subject.
The article concludes with even more evisceration of The Economyth on facts and details (re: the rightwing media lies of Miguel Henrique Otero, one of the 2002 coup signatories, in his newspaper El Nacional), and mentions something else The Economyth black-holes (doesn't report): USAID funding of rightwing groups in Venezuela.
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The majority of organizations allegedly defending “human rights” in our country receive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID – both US government agencies. More than $20 million has already been requested by the US government to fund opposition political parties and anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela in 2012. The Economist has neglected to publish or report on this information. -- (my emphasis)
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This latter point is the most important one, in my opinion. The Economyth and other corporate 'news'/opinion outlets NEVER publish the other side--the leftist side, reflecting the majority in most of Latin America these days. They ONLY publish the rightwing/corporate/war profiteer side, including lies, distortion and disinformation
within 'news' articles. Thus, it is impossible--from these 'news'/opinion sources--to understand ANYTHING about Latin America, where an enormous and historic economic/political revolution is occurring, including leftist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay (!), Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, in addition to Venezuela--and whose leaders have furthermore united on a regional strategy of cooperation, independence, peace and social justice.
It is not terribly surprising when corporate-controlled 'news'/opinion sources favor corporate/war profiteer interests on their editorial pages and, to some extent, in their selection and "framing" of 'news' stories, but this total EXCLUSION of ANY other viewpoint is NOT journalism and it violates every principle of the liberal capitalist model that created "the marketplace of ideas." It is NOT a free marketplace in any sense of the word. It is a controlled, deadly, repressive propaganda machine that has become positively rancid in its brainwashing tactics.
You can know just how rancid this propaganda is, when you have corporate-paid and even USAID-funded 'journalist' employees mounting "free speech" protests in a country--Venezuela--that is actually doing something to promote balanced news coverage on the public airwaves, like we used to have here in the U.S. "Corporate speech" is NOT "free speech"! The rich monopolizing 'news' and opinion is NOT democratic. And it is the duty of any government that is truly representing the interests of its people to bust corporate monopolies of the 'news" and promote "free speech" for ALL.