It’s no secret that U.S. media outlets don’t have much love for left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. A PBS NewsHour segment (10/5/12) just ahead of the recent election showed just how far you could go.
Correspondent Ray Suarez opened by calling the election “a watershed moment for the world’s second-largest oil-producing nation and a critical supplier of crude oil to the U.S”–I guess we know what makes Venezuela important to the United States.
Chavez has “openly antagonizing the United States as he’s cozied up to the world’s most isolated regimes.” And Suarez has an example:
He’s continued to thwart American efforts on a range of international issues, such as Washington’s attempt to convince Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to halt his country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
There is no evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. We’ve been over this before with the NewsHour; early this year the show actually chopped a quote from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, removing the part where he said there was no evidence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon.
This is arguably the most important fact about the Iran crisis–that the country is facing harsh sanctions and the threat of military strikes over unsubstantiated suspicions about a nuclear weapons program. But it’s apparently important for U.S. media outlets to turn this allegation into a fact…especially in a story about another Official Enemy.
When you see horseshit like this from PBS, you just want to say
“Fuck Big Bird.”
It’s hard to defend public broadcasting when this is SOP.
The larger point is, of course, that the idea of public, noncommercial, gummint-supported media is worth defending.
Just not much of what passes for it, and what we pay for.
Of course, the coverage of Chavez has been awful. Putting Venezuela and Iran together: it’s a mainstream media disinformation orgasm:
Media Bias Against Chavez
Lot of good links there. Check the Updates.
And the lies spread worldwide. In Australia no mainstream media has ever mentioned the Panetta statement or the NIEs of 2007 and 2009.
pbs was taken over by bush’s tomlinson and has never regained any credibility but i say save big bird and suspend newshour until they get the fox out of the chicken coop. an exceptionalism propaganda sideshow.
What part of CIA MEDIA surprises you?
Spook media is a norm since the 1930s.
WWII – Office of War Information, Bureau of Motion Pictures, Office of Special Services.
Cold War – Psychological Strategy Board
US Army – Field Manual FM 33-1 Psychological Operations
1976 Senate [Frank] Church Committee Hearings on CIA Abuses grills Director of CIA, WIlliam Colby, on CIA media – “yes, some. Tell you more in closed door sessions.”
Oct 20, 1977 article by Carl Bernstein – ‘The CIA and the Media’
1979 book on CIA and the Media ‘Katherine the Great’ by Debora Davis shredded on orders of Washington Post spook, Ben Bradlee of the CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence, just like ONI briefer to Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bob Woodward
-Bill Moyers, LBJ’s Karl Rove, part of CIA high-level psyops team targeting China in the 1960s and then a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations (civilian proxy of CIA) from 1967-1974, the worst lost Vietnam War years when a domestic counterinsurgency program murdered and jailed dissident leaders such as Rev. Martin Luther King
…etc.
noam chomsky wrote and spoke recently about the corporate/state complex and the threat to our freedom and security, and he spoke about the undesirable results of unregulated finance capitalism. ( why should big bird be saved from the wreckage?)
one of his points was about privatization and the takeover of the commons which is happening more and more, or proposed (public schools, the threat to social security) . he said that defunding a program is often a first step toward privatization. once the program is too burdensome, since it is underfunded, moves to privatize it become easier.
i thought of this about romney’s moves on big bird, but i thought, pbs already is privatized isn’t it? hasn’t it already been taken over by… republicans?… since bush?
i believe that i saw that fox is one of their supporters! advertised as so! and could charlie rose actually have/ be a bigger coke advertisement than the american idol show? i think he does/is!
also (conspiracy theorists!?) the freemasons starring ben franklin are also advertising heavily on pbs these days. do they represent corporatization of the whole wide world (order) , or not? no?
in any case, someone must really want it all! if even big bird goes down…?
and won’t that be a nice little (big) SIMPLE symbol . we’ll all have to realize the whole sesame st /corporate reality then!
and if big bird’s not free, why should we be? … or our kids?
or i should have said, if we’re not free, which should big bird be?
But it’s not really about saving big bird, it is about funding that is supposed to be from the dis-enfranchised and the other wise voiceless.
I can recall when the uber-right went ape on the fact that sesame street introduced characters that were not “main stream approved”. They made it their passion to destroy the place because Sesame Street had people who were not paired Male/Female according to the fundamentalists idea of partner and relationships.
On the other hand, I find it rather foolish on anyone’s part to have utilized any of sesame streets characters for political purposes. Neither the count nor big bird should be doing political ads. Humanity issues yes! Political no!
PBS not only ‘underreports the remarkable achievements by Chavez in Venezuela, PBS has also ignored the same achievements by Libya’s late Omar Khadafi. I still remember my amazement when I accidentally stumbled on the wonderful story of their accomplishments for their people. Khadafi like Chavez, used their oil revenues to support public education. In Libya, the high school grad is offered a college tuition program, and a $50,000 loan, at virtually no interest, payable over his lifetime. He can use it to start a business, or to build a home, if he is married. Same educational benefits exist in Venezuela, where the poverty rate has sunk to less than half its former rates. Khadafi also constructed the largest manmade river in the world, to make a former desert, arable for the Libyan people. But oh my gosh Khadafi should never have gone on the gold standard. And he should never have convinced two other African nations to combine with Libya to form a union whose currency was based on a gold standard–a financial threat to the European Union and the United States. My, my, my. China etc would have kicked up a dust storm sweeping into Libya’s banking system. Just hope Chavez doesn’t get any bright golden ideas.
Thanks for the great thread, especially for what Jan has written, which is, to be truthful, something Amy Goodman dare not report. I have often woddered why 11 Million wouldn’t be satisfied with Gaddafi’s egalitarian distribution of Libya’s huge oil wealth. Too bad we don’t know the source and funding of the original “rebels”, who were traveling about the desert sporting $30 Dollar haircuts and $30,000.00 US trucks with a lot of firepower riding in the flatbed. After sodomizing Gaddafi with a pole, they set his corpse upright in a Big US SUV and paraded him around town for awhile, committing a series of barbaric acts that Madame Hillary refused to condemn. Anyway, I want any of you to answer the next question I have, which I will posit immediately below this comment.
What has Iran done to breach any international law or treaty? I ask this because Panetta says Iran doesn’t have a bomb or a program to build one, yet many acts, both economic and sabotaging, have been levied against Iran by Israel and the West, particularly by the US. Is what Iran is doing against any international law or treaty, or is Iran just offending the general Western consensus about the acceptabl extent of its power? Is there a basis in international law to sanction a country for its merely offending general principles?
A few years back Pat Robertson opined that the US should assassinate the dictator Chavez. He caught a lot of flack for openly advocating assassination. He got a complete pass for calling the democratically elected Chavez a dictator.
Your article states that there is no evidence that Iran is developing, or has a desire to develop, a nuclear weapons program. That seems to be true, having listened to many TRNN interviews with experts in this area.
But why doesn’t your article also state that there is no evidence that Chavez is thwarting US plans to stop the alleged Iranian nuclear arms program? Unless there really IS evidence … it would be hard to believe that Chavez has any interest in supporting such a program, if it does even exist.
BTW, fellow posters: This post is not about re-igniting the same worn-out discussions about whether Iran has a desire for WMDs. This post is, rather, about pointing out any evidence that CHAVEZ is behind Iran or supporting WMD development. I politely request that responses to THIS post keep with the topic I am starting. Thanks!
the propaganda war between progressives and the corporate media continues. i long ago gave up on mainstream media though on ocassion i will peruse what they say. a luta continua!
I loved that David above actually called Chavez a dictator.Shame on you.QWe dont like that work around here.From reading FAIR i thought he was a Democratically elected……..saint.As far as Iran, why is it that everyone in power seems to believe they are working toward a bomb as fast as their little hands can work?You know people like The president,his national security team,the CIA,FBI,the joint chiefs,and most of our allies along with their security apparatuses.Then there is FAIR, and her contributors.Who to believe,who to believe?I just cant make a decision.Kind of funny actually.One of the few issues both right and left agree on.Here though we are stumping for the dictator and the mullahs .Only in America
Not just PBS… Did anyone hear NPR reporters before the Venezuelan elections stating that Chavez would be “forced out of power”? As if he weren’t democratically elected. Makes me wonder if they ever spoke this way of any of the dictators supported by the US. Pinochet comes to mind, but there are so many more.
It has been going on for more than 200 years: anyone who helps the poor, as Chavez has, must understand that the rich and the powerful will bring the hammer down on him.
Iran is just the manufactured bogeyman dejour, like “terrorists” after 9/11 or “communists” in the ’50s. Amerika always needs an “enemy” (and a complicit media to provide the propaganda) to keep the war machine running.
So Larry thinks the problem with Chavez ,is that the “rich” in this country hate how he helps the poor?And Teejae think the problem the world is having with Iran is due to our “war machine”,and the press that it holds in its iron pocket?Um…………Have you guys considered the Kardashians?
michael e, Once you open your eyes and your mind, you will see.
No word from Suarez, apparently a good minority, as to what the people who elected Chavez think. What an embarrassment. Bravo to FAIR for its terse exposure of this story.