FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
[Note: this piece is a sidebar to “The Repeatedly Re-Elected Autocrat.”] “Hugo Chávez is practicing a new style of authoritarianism,” Javier Corrales wrote in Foreign Policy (1-2/06). “Chávez has updated tyranny for today.” While conceding that Venezuela is formally democratic, Corrales went on to list some of the most common accusations against Chávez, emphasizing the […]
Accusing Latin American politicians of corruption is one of the most common ways to discredit them. President Hugo Chávez himself came into office accusing the entire political class in Venezuela of corruption, which made him very popular with many voters, who were tired of seeing their country slipping into poverty despite its enormous oil wealth. […]
The horror with which U.S. television personalities and newspaper columnists have responded to the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s skewering of George W. Bush at the United Nations is just the latest in a long series of media portrayals of Chávez as a destabilizing force in the hemisphere. While op-ed pages scarcely mention the Bush administration’s […]
One charge that U.S. media have hurled at Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez—that poverty has worsened under his administration—seems tailored to alienate the populist leader from his natural supporters. Isn’t Chávez a leftist? Aren’t his policies pro-poor? progressives may wonder. What about all that oil wealth? Is this really true? No, it’s not. But that doesn’t […]
Following Hugo Chávez’s September 20 speech at the U.N., which included a mocking reference to George W. Bush as “the devil,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told reporters “the real issue” was that Chávez was not “giving the same freedom of speech” to Venezuelans (Daily News, 9/21/06). Editorials condemning Chávez and approvingly citing […]
On October 9, Parade magazine—the Sunday newspaper supplement with a circulation of 34.5 million, making it the country’s most widely distributed magazine—published an inaccurate smear against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The smear, appearing in the Q&A column “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade,” was a response to a letter writer who wanted to know “where Fidel Castro […]
Jim Lobe on Donald Rumsfeld’s recent trip to Latin America. Also this week: the October 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard provoked a national conversation about hate crimes and homophobia. But a recent 20/20 program reframed the case to argue that Shepard’s sexual orientation was not central to the crime. Chris Graham from the Advocate magazine joins CounterSpin to weigh in.
How accurate is U.S. media’s portrayal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez? Also this week: what will the future of TV look like following the changeover to digital technology?
In January, the already bleak human rights situation in Colombia was reported to be in a state of “alarming degradation,” according to United Nations human rights observers (Associated Press, 1/20/01). A joint report from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America (“Colombia Human Rights Certification II,” 1/01) found that “political […]
The Associated Press‘ long-time Bolivia correspondent, Peter McFarren, resigned late last year after his extensive involvement in Bolivian politics was revealed. What is still unclear, however, is why AP allowed someone with so many conflicts of interest to be a correspondent in the first place. The Internet-based Narco News Bulletin (10/6/00) was the first to […]
More than 200,000 Guatemalan civilians were killed or disappeared during 36 years of civil war ending in 1996, according to a report from the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission released in February. The nine-volume, 3,500-page report found that U.S. assistance was a key factor in human rights violations during the armed conflict. Yet Guatemala’s human rights […]
For sheer propaganda, high marks go to Newsweek‘s Noriega cover story (1/15/90), featuring excerpts from a book about Noriega by Wall Street Journal reporter Frederick Kempe. The book and its author were much touted by the media during the invasion. Some highlights: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST ELLIOTT ABRAMS. “By the summer of 1985, the State Department’s […]
Press coverage of human rights in El Salvador and Nicaragua provides an excellent test of journalistic integrity. This is because the US government has staked clear positions: supporting the Salvadoran regime and playing down its less savory qualities; opposing and denigrating the Nicaraguan government while trying to portray the US-organized contras as “freedom fighters.” The […]
No sooner was it established that Pan Am Flight 103 had been destroyed by a bomb than the U.S. media went into its predictable ritual. Journalists prepared President Reagan and President-elect Bush with all the usual questions: How can we bring terrorists to justice? Will we retaliate against any country harboring those responsible for bombing […]
On Jan. 23, 1988, FAIR sent a questionnaire — excerpted below — to senior New York Times editors and correspondents covering Central America. It challenged Times coverage following the signing of the Esquipulas (“Arias”) regional peace accord, which required all Central American countries to respect human and political rights, and called for an end to […]
On October 27, 1987, the president of El Salvador’s Human Rights Commission, Herbert Ananya, was assassinated in broad daylight on the streets of the capital. He was the seventh official of the group to be murdered or disappear in the 1980s. The story didn’t make the front page of The New York Times or the […]
The signing of the Central America peace accord in Guatemala City set off a U.S. media reaction that showed once again the extent to which White House assumptions are shared by the national press corps. While some reporters have questioned whether President Reagan sincerely supports the Arias plan, virtually all mainstream media accept the administration’s […]
