When Is a Coup Not a Coup? When Media Say It Isn’t One
Merriam-Webster defines “coup” as “the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.” Surely that’s what Juan Guaido was striving for when he urged Venezuela’s military to overthrow elected President Nicolas Maduro. But corporate media went through convolutions to call the attempted coup something, anything, other than its proper name.
It “can’t be called a ‘coup,’” wrote Andres Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald (4/30/19)—it’s a “military uprising.” “This is not a coup,” declared Eli Lake for Bloomberg (4/30/19)—but a “democratic rescue mission.” But the award for most awkward euphemism goes to the Washington Post (4/30/19), which offered “opposition-led, military-backed challenge.” Anything to avoid that four-letter word.
Playing Count the Errors in CNN Venezuela Coverage
Crediting six separate reporters, CNN reported on May 5 that:
pressure is mounting on [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro to step down, following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaidó over him for president.
Aside from the fact that pressure on Maduro was clearly ebbing in the wake of the failed coup attempt, the story completely garbled the basic facts of Venezuelan politics: The presidential election was last May, and Maduro seems to have gotten by far the most votes, in part because of an opposition boycott. Guaido most certainly was not chosen by the voters, since he was never a candidate.
After considerable social media ridicule, CNN corrected the story to say:
Pressure has been mounting on Maduro to step down since January, when opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president and was backed by the US and dozens of other nations.
US ‘Withdraws,’ Iran ‘Breaches’
Trump Withdraws US From Iran Accord
—Wall Street Journal (5/8/18)
Iran Poised to Breach Parts of Nuclear Agreement, Europeans Warn
—Wall Street Journal (5/6/19)
The ‘Pure Fun’ of Flying Over War Zones
Asked by a colleague, “What do you enjoy most about being a Pentagon correspondent?” the New York Times’ Helene Cooper (4/18/19) responded:
The cool hardware! I love checking out all the toys the American military has. I’ve flown for hours in the co-pilot seat of a B-1 bomber, including during midair refuels. I’ve done the catapult takeoff and abrupt landing on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. I’ve been in Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters over Baghdad, Kabul and the DMZ, on the border of North and South Korea. I’ve been on an American naval destroyer in the South China Sea while it was being shadowed by the Chinese. That part of the job is just pure fun.
For NYT, Israeli Apartheid Is Always Coming but Never Gets Here
A recent New York Times editorial (4/11/19) warned that “under Mr. [Benjamin] Netanyahu, Israel is on a trajectory to become what critics say will be an apartheid state like the former South Africa.” This is a warning the Times has been publishing regularly for years now—e.g., in 2003, an editorial (1/29/03) warned that holding on to the Occupied Territories without giving occupied Palestinians the right to vote “would result in a form of permanent apartheid.”
A year before that, Times columnist Thomas Friedman (10/16/02) predicted that by 2010, “colonial settlers [will] have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them only by apartheid-like policies.” But a year after 2010, Friedman (2/1/11) was writing that if Israelis convince themselves peace is impossible, “they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state.” A year after that, Friedman (8/1/12) wrote that without a two-state solution, “Israel could be doomed to become a kind of apartheid South Africa.” Two years after that, Friedman (2/11/14) said that “Israel by default could become some kind of apartheid-like state in permanent control over…2.5 million Palestinians.”
The time when the Times will admit that, after denying occupied Palestinians the right to vote for 52 years, Israel/Palestine is already an apartheid state (FAIR.org, 4/26/19) does not seem to be approaching anytime soon.
How NYT Remembers Apartheid Ending
“Today’s election will cap a quarter century of transformation that began when a white-majority regime realized its time was passed.”
—New York Times (5/8/19)
White Terror Suspect a ‘Nice Guy,’ AP Reports
“Man Charged in Synagogue Shooting Was Star Scholar and Athlete” was the original headline on an Associated Press story 4/30/19) that read more like a letter of recommendation than a profile of a murder suspect. The article presented John T. Earnest, accused of killing one and shooting two others at a synagogue in Poway, California, as a lover of music who was “a nice guy.” “Everybody loved him,” according to one source, who said of his family: “They are outstanding. Some of the finest people I’ve ever met.”
The article insisted that Earnest “counted Jews and black people among his friends,” as though to claim the Hitler-idolizing attacker of a mosque as well as a synagogue might not be a racist antisemite. It took pains to present him as a musical genius whose performances “drew audiences to their feet…. Crowds would be cheering his name.”
Similarly, USA Today‘s headline (4/28/19) read, “California Synagogue Shooting: Suspect Known as Quiet, Smart While Authorities Question if He Was Hateful.”
