https://nacla.org/news/2013/5/9/new-york-times-venezuela-and-honduras-case-journalistic-misconduct
The New York Times on Venezuela and Honduras: A Case of Journalistic Misconduct - Add new comment <https://nacla.org/comment/reply/9043#comment-form> - Email this page <https://nacla.org/forward?path=node%2F9043> May 8 2013 Keane Bhatt The day after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez died, *New York Times* reporter Lizette Alvarez provided a sympathetic portrayal of outpourings of raucous celebration and, to many, cautious optimism for the future in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Her article, Venezuelan Expatriates See a Reason to Celebrate, noted that many had come to Miami to escape Chávezs iron grip on the nation, and quoted a Venezuelan computer software consultant who said, bluntly: We had a dictator. There were no laws, no justice.1 [image: 1764]Photo Credit: The Guardian A credulous reader of Alvarezs report would have no idea that since 1998, Chávez had triumphed in 14 of 15 elections or referenda, all of which were deemed free and fair by international monitors. Chávezs most recent reelection, won by an 11-point margin, boasted an 81% participation rate; former president Jimmy Carter described the election process in Venezuela as the best in the world out of 92 cases that the Carter Center had evaluated (an endorsement that, to date, has never been reported by the * Times*).2 In contrast to Alvarez, who allowed her quotation describing Chávez as a dictator to stand uncontested, *Times* reporter Neela Banerjee in 2008 cited false accusations hurled at President Obama by opponentshe is a Muslim who attended a madrassa in Indonesia as a boy and was sworn into office on the Koranbut immediately invalidated them: In fact, he is a Christian who was sworn in on a Bible, she wrote in her next sentence.3 At the *Times*, it seems, facts are deployed on a case-by-case basis. The *Times* editorial board was even more dishonest in the wake of Chávezs death: The Bush administration badly damaged Washingtons reputation throughout Latin America when it unwisely blessed a failed 2002 military coup attempt against Mr. Chávez, wrote the paper, concealing its editorial boards own role in blessing that very coup at the time. In 2002, with the resignation [sic] of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator, declared a *Times *editorial, bizarrely adding that Washington never publicly demonized Mr. Chávez, that *actual* dictator Pedro Carmona was simply a respected business leader, and that the U.S.-backed, two-day coup was a purely Venezuelan affair.4 The editorial boardan initial champion of the de facto regime that issued a diktat within hours to dissolve practically every branch of government, including Venezuelas National Assembly and Supreme Courtwould 11 years later brazenly criticize Chávez after his death for having dominated Venezuelan politics for 14 years with authoritarian methods. The newspaper argued that Chávezs government weakened judicial independence, intimidated political opponents and human rights defenders, and ignored rampant, and often deadly, violence by the police and prison guards. After lambasting Chávezs record, the piece concluded that the United States should now make clear its support for democratic and civilian transition in a post-Chávez Venezuelaas if Chávez were anyone other than a fairly elected leader with an overwhelming popular mandate. But there is a country currently in the grip of an undemocratic, illegitimate government that much more closely corresponds with the *Times* editorial boards depiction of Venezuela: Honduras, which in 2009 suffered a coup détat that deposed its freely elected, left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya. While the *Times* criticized Chávez for weakening judicial independence, the newspaper could not be bothered to even report on the extraordinary institutional breakdown of Honduras, when in December 2012, its Congress illegally sacked four Supreme Court justices who voted against a law proposed by the president, Porfirio Lobo, who himself had came to power in 2009 in repressive, sham elections held under a post-coup military dictatorship and boycotted by most international election observers. When it comes to intimidation of political opponents and human rights defenders, Venezuelas problems are almost imperceptible compared with those of Honduras. Over 14 years under Chávez, Venezuela has had no record of disappearances or murders of such individuals. In post-coup Honduras, the practice is now endemic. In one year alone2012at least four leaders of the Zelaya-organized opposition party Libre were slain, including mayoral candidate Edgardo Adalid Motiño. In addition, two dozen journalists and 70 members of the LGBT community have been killed since the coup, including prominent LGBT anti-coup activists like Walter Tróchez and Erick Martinez (neither case was sufficiently notable so as to warrant a mention in the *Times*). And although the *Times* editors decried police violence in Venezuela, the Honduran police systematically engage in extrajudicial killings of their own citizens. In December 2012, Julieta Castellanos, the chancellor of Hondurass largest university, presented the findings of a report detailing 149 killings committed by the Honduran National Police over the past two years under Porfirio Lobo. In the face of over six killings by the police a month, she warned, It is alarming that the police themselves are the ones killing people in this country. The public is in a state of defenselessness and impunity.5 Such alarm is further justified by Lobos appointment of Juan Carlos El Tigre Bonilla as director of the National Police, despite reports that he once oversaw death squads.6 Finally, the *Times* editorial board lamented Venezuelan prison violence. But consider for context that the NGO Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, consistently critical of Chávez, reported 591 prison deaths in 2012 for the country of 30 million.7 In Honduras, a country with slightly more than a quarter of Venezuelas population, over 360 died in just one incidenta 2012 prison fire in Comayagua, in which prison authorities kept firefighters from handling the conflagration for 30 crucial minutes while the inmates doors remained locked. According to survivors, the guards ignored their pleas for help as many burned alive.8 Given the contrast in the two countries democratic credentials and human rights records, obvious questions arise: How has *The New York Times* portrayed Venezuela and Honduras since Hondurass 2009 coup détat? If, in both its news and opinion pages, the *Times* regularly prints accusations of Venezuelan authoritarianism, what terminology has the *Times* employed to describe the military government headed by Roberto Micheletti, which assumed power after Zelayas overthrow, or the illegitimate Lobo administration that succeeded it? The answer is revealing. For almost four years, the *Times* has maintained a double standard that is literally unfailing. Not a single contributor in the *Times* over 100 news and opinion articles has ever referred to the Honduran government as autocratic, undemocratic, or authoritarian. Nor have *Times* writers ever once labeled Micheletti or Lobo despots, tyrants, strongmen, dictators, or *caudillos*. At the same time, from June 28, 2009, to March 7, 2013, the newspaper has printed at least 15 news and opinion articles in which its contributors have used any number of the aforementioned epithets for Chávez.9 (This methodology excludes the typically vitriolic anti-Chávez blog entries that the paper features on its website, as well as print pieces like Lizette Alvarezs, which quote someone describing Chávez as a dictator.) During this period, the papers news reporters themselves have referred to Chávez as a despot, an authoritarian ruler, and an autocrat; its opinion writers have deemed him a petro-dictator, an indomitable strongman, a brutal neo-authoritarian, a warmonger, and a colonel-turned-oil-sultan. On the eve of Venezuelas October elections, a *Times* op-ed managed to call the Chávez administration authoritarian no fewer than three times in 800 words.10 And Chávezs death offered no reprieve from this tendency: On March 6, reporter Simon Romero wrote about Chávezs gaithe strutt[ed] like the strongman in a caudillo noveland concluded that Chávez had become, indeed, a caudillo.11 [image: 1715]Photo Credit: New York Times Magazine These most basic violations of journalistic standardsreferring to a democratically elected leader as a ruler with absolute powerdoes not simply end with its writers. On July 24, 2011, Bill Keller, then the newspapers executive editor, wrote the piece, Why Tyrants Love the Murdoch Scandal, which included a graphic of Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe side by side with Chávez. Keller referred to them both when he concluded, Autocrats will be autocrats.12 But if despotism, defined as the cruel and oppressive exercise of absolute power, is to have any meaning, it must apply to the Honduran government, whose militarynot just its policeroutinely kills innocent civilians. On May 26, 2012, for example, Honduran special forces killed 15-year-old Ebed Yanez, and high-level officers allegedly managed its cover-up by dispatching six to eight masked soldiers in dark uniforms to the teenagers body, poking it with rifles, and [picking] up the empty bullet casings to conceal evidence that could be linked back to the military, according to the Associated Press.13 The paradox of the *Times*its derisive posture toward what it considers antidemocratic tendencies in Venezuela as it simultaneously avoids the same treatment of Hondurass inarguable repressioncan only be explained by one crucial factor: Honduras has been a firm U.S. ally since Zelayas overthrow. [image: 1716]Photo Credit: SOA Watch In fact, the unit accused of killing Yanez was armed, trained, and vetted by the United Stateseven its trucks were donated by the U.S. government. As the AP further reported, in 2012, the U.S. Defense Department appropriated $67.4 million for Honduran military contracts, with an additional $89 million in annual spending to maintain Joint Task Force Bravo, a 600-member U.S. unit based at Soto Cano Air Base. Furthermore, neither the State Department nor the Pentagon could provide details explaining a 2011 $1.3 billion authorization for exports of military electronics to Honduras.14 The *Times* scrupulous, unerring record of avoiding disparaging characterizations of Hondurass human-rights-violating government may explain why it has never once made reference to 94 Congress members demand that the Obama administration withhold U.S. assistance to the Honduran military and police in March 2012. Nor has the paper reported on 84 Congress members letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later that year, condemning Hondurass institutional breakdown and judicial impunity.15 When evaluating the newspapers relative silence on Honduras, it is worth imagining if Chávez were to have ascended to power in as dubious a manner as Lobo; if for years Venezuelas government permitted its security apparatus to regularly kill civilians; or if the Chávez administration presided over conditions of impunity under which political opponents and human rights activists were disappeared, tortured, and killed. As a careful examination of the language and coverage of nearly four years of *New York Times *articles reveals, concern for freedom and democracy in Latin America has not been an honest concern for the liberal media institution. The papers unwavering conformity to the posture of the U.S. State Departmentconsistently vilifying an official U.S. enemy while systematically downplaying the crimes of a U.S. allyshows that its foremost priority is to subordinate itself to the priorities of Washington. ------------------------------ 1. Lizette Alvarez, Venezuelan Expatriates See a Reason to Celebrate, *The New York Times*, March 6, 2013. 2. Keane Bhatt, A Hall of Shame for Venezuelan Elections Coverage, *Manufacturing Contempt *(blog), nacla.org, October 8, 2012. 3. Neela Banerjee, Obama Walks a Difficult Path as He Courts Jewish Voters, *The New York Times*, March 1, 2008. 4. Hugo Chávez Departs, *The New York Times*, April 13, 2002. 5. Policías de Honduras, Responsables de 149 Muertes Violentas, *La Prensa,* December 3, 2012. 6. Katherine Corcoran and Martha Mendoza, Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, Honduras Police Chief, Investigated In Killing, Associated Press, June 1, 2012. 7. Fabiola Sánchez, Venezuela Prison Deaths: 591 Detainees Killed Countrys Jails Last Year*, *Associated Press, January 31, 2013. 8. Hundreds Killed in Hellish Fire at Prison in Honduras, Associated Press, February 16, 2012. 9. Authors research, using LexisNexis database searches for identical terms in reference to the two countries. For a detailed list of examples, contact him at keane.l.bh...@gmail.com. 10. Francisco Toro, How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant, *The New York Times *, October 6, 2012. 11. Simon Romero, Hugo Chávez, Leader Who Transformed Venezuela, Dies at 58, *The New York Times*, March 6, 2013. 12. Bill Keller, Why Tyrants Love the Murdoch Scandal, *The New York Times Magazine*, July 24, 2011. 13. Alberto Arce, Dad Seeks Justice for Slain Son in Broken Honduras, Associated Press, November 12, 2012. 14. Martha Mendoza, US Military Expands Its Drug War in Latin America, Associated Press, February 3, 2013. 15. Office of Representative Jan Schakowsky, 94 House Members Send Letter to Secretary Clinton Calling for Suspension of Assistance to Honduras, March 13, 2012. Correspondence from Jared Polis et al. to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, June 26, 2012. ------------------------------ *Keane Bhatt is a regular contributor to the Media Accuracy on Latin America (MALA) section of *NACLA Report* and the creator of the Manufacturing Contempt blog on nacla.org.* [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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