MOTHER JONES ARTICLE
Sunday 29, December 2002

[I was sent an article published in Mother Jones. I did not look at the link and just replied to its content as sent by my friend. Later I did realize that it was from Mother Jones, January/February issue 2003, as one should gather from the link. If somebody from Mother Jones reads this and is incommoded s/he can let me know to remove it. The article was sent by the friend as a reply to my latest analysis]



>
> >Since the strike is going on and I have little to do, I gathered my
> >thoughts and wrote a little assay to try to help some people that asked to
> >understand some of the root problems that Venezuela faces today. It is a
> >bit long but I hope interesting for those that want to know more about it.
> >Soon I will give one of my updates, I have written enough for today.
>
> Daniel,
>
> Thanks for your interesting and thoughtful essay -- it certainly helped me
> to understand the situation there. I recently came across the following
> article which shows how biased reporting can affect people's opinions:
>
>
>
>
> I'll append the text for those may have difficulty accessing the website.
>
> -Robin


Thank you Robin.

This article by Mr. Lynn is indeed interesting and yet it is an excellent example on how foreign media do distort news coverage for purposes that I will not speculate on [remember, I had not realized yet that it was from Mother Jones]. Some of his comments on the alleged constitutional improvements are sound except that he did not realize that their application was not as ideal as he seems to think they were. Chavez uses these "new rights" as a way to secure his power base. But nothing new under the sun, and nothing Mr. Lynn could observe since he has not lived here in the past few years.

But that is not my concern here. I will select a couple of paragraphs that indeed illustrate the bias and thus render the article suspicious.

>
> Chaos and Constitution
>
> By Barry C. Lynn
>
> [snip, snip]

First evidence:

>
> It has been six months since Chávez was ousted briefly in a coup,
> and now his opponents -- business leaders, a handful of military officers,
> almost all of the nation's media -- are once again trying to orchestrate
> his removal. So Escobar and other chavistas have taken to the streets,
> vowing to protect the president -- with their bodies, if necessary.


I would like Mr. Lynn to explain me how a few disgruntled bosses, a few military without troops, and the media have been able to stop most of the oil flow out (see recent prices of oil) and throw hundred of thousand of people to the streets every two-three days for the past month.

Mr. Lynn seems to have forgotten (conveniently?) that the strike has been called by the trade unions that Chavez was unable to secure in its internal elections, when the workers elected their leaders instead of the ones that Chavez tried to impose. Mr. Lynn just forgot the principal motor in this strike: the workers. And he also forgot to mention (very continently?) that all political parties of the opposition, including even parties to the left of Chavez, have gathered under an umbrella organization that also includes a lot of NGO. I think that this "Coordinadora Democratica" has more appeal than the culprits pointed by Mr. Lynn.

But it gets better.

>
> Yet much of the hatred for Chávez arises from visceral class antipathy. The
> son of small-town schoolteachers, Chávez is a powerfully built mestizo with
> a wide, almost meaty face and thick hands. He's the sort of man that
> upper-class Venezuelans expect to see hauling sacks of concrete at a
> construction site or driving a bus, not running the country. Many refuse
> even to sit in the same room as Chávez, let alone debate the details of
> macroeconomic policy or how to divvy up scarce state funds.


Injurious and false. As an example: the CEO of one of the three wireless companies is blacker than Chavez and has been a critic of some communication regulation issues. Surely he had no problem to sit down with Chavez 's officials. The fact is that when Carmona was elected to head the business organization he tried to have a meeting with Chavez. This one never accepted. Actually Chavez has made a point of not meeting any business leader that has offered to discuss issues with him. He only invites leaders that are willing to sit through his peroratas. Through my own business contacts I can vouch that when it is convenient Chavez meets business people but very rarely and always under his terms. How could Mr. Lynn even assume that a business man would rather lose his possessions rather than sit with Chavez? I should remind him that Lenin said "capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them" or something in that spirit.

And last but not least.

>
> It's another hot day in mid-October, and the opposition is mounting a huge
> march of its own. The occasion is the six-month anniversary of Chávez's
> two-day fall from power, and a few hundred thousand people are marching
> from the leafy, affluent neighborhoods of eastern Caracas toward the
> squalid center of the city. It's a big crowd, and noisy, and mostly white.

Mostly white? I was there, true whites (if there is such a thing) were at most a third. But let's keep reading.

>
> All of Venezuela's private television stations
> and national newspapers are owned by the opposition, and all are employed
> to deliver an unadulterated flow of anti-Chávez propaganda in the form of
> news, popular music, even soap operas.


Anti Chavez soap operas? Anti Chavez pop? And, how come in three years Chavez has not been able to lure investors to create his own TV and newspaper? Oh! I forgot! Chavez controls a state owned network! I suppose that Mr. Lynn never flipped channels in his hotel and thus never noticed this propaganda vehicle heavily pro Chavez..............

>
> The distortions can be dramatic.
> Today's anti-Chávez march is covered by all four TV channels from five in
> the morning until midnight. The pro-Chávez march three days later -- though
> twice as large -- is ignored entirely by three of the channels, and covered
> only sporadically by the fourth. (The American media also played up the
> anti-Chávez march, inflating its turnout to a million.) The marchers and
> the media are demanding that a popular referendum on the president be held
> immediately.


OK! There is plenty of material about these two marches. Aerial views of the main rallying point for the two marches exist. Actually, the rallying point for the two marches was the same! It is easy to calculate the attendance when you know the dimensions of the avenue (Avenida Bolivar). By all serious accounts Chavez supporters were half as many as the opposition.

But let's go further. The opposition march was the bigger in Venezuelan history (until the one a few days ago, see my "transfiguration" post). Isn't that noteworthy enough for TV to cover it all through the day? Doesn't US TV cover around the clock important events? Even more damming, did Mr. Lynn noticed that the state TV did not cover the opposition march except as a blurb in the news? And that the "fourth" channel did cover actually quite well the pro Chavez march? And how come Mr. Lynn missed the fact that when Chavez came to his march he commandeered all the TV networks to broadcast his speech that lasted for almost two hours? Ah! Perhaps Mr. Lynn is not aware that by law the Venezuelan president is allowed to force simultaneous broadcast of his important messages, and Chavez has used and abused of this system.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Lynn damages some good points in his article by such crass misinformation or plain desinformation. But it is much easier to use rich/poor black/white contrasts to explain everything in life.