New York Times reporter John Burns admires Margaret Thatcher's legacy. But when he claims she lifted millions to prosperity, does he have any evidence?
Apr
17
2013
Why We Need the New Yorker to Correct Its Error on Venezuelan Inequality
By 39 Comments
The New Yorker is a magazine whose name is practically synonymous with factchecking–which makes you wonder how the glaring, major errors in the its recent coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got through.
Apr
16
2013
USA Today: Venezuelans Voted for High Unemployment and Food Shortages
By 18 Comments
If USA Today is presenting an objective record of the Chavez years, how on Earth did he win so many elections? By that score, Venezuela must also have an especially ill-informed populace–or maybe Venezuelans know a different reality.
Apr
08
2013
WikiLeaks: Was Chavez Right About U.S. Meddling?
By 10 Comments
It's no secret that U.S. media loathed the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Much of that was purely political; sure, Chavez could have given shorter speeches and been nicer to his political opponents–but it's hard to imagine that would have mattered much to, say, the Washington Post editorial board. One thing that turned up constantly in Chavez coverage over the years was his suspicion that the United States government was looking to undermine his rule. As a Washington Post news article (1/10/13) put it: A central ideological pillar of Chavez's rule over 14 years has been to oppose Republican and [...]
Mar
08
2013
FAIR TV: Hugo Chavez in U.S. Media, Time's Path to Iran War, Keystone XL and the TV Left
By 9 Comments
This week on FAIR TV: Hugo Chavez was loathed by the U.S. press–and that didn't change when they reported his death. Plus Time magazine provides a look at the "Path to War" with Iran–omitting a key fact along the way.
And the Keystone XL pipeline is back in the news. But when it came up on ABC's This Week, "left" pundit James Carville had a curious message.
Mar
08
2013
NYT Debates Hugo Chavez–Minus the Debate
By 14 Comments
"On Eve of His Funeral, Debating Chávez’s Legacy" is the headline over William Neuman's piece in the New York Times today. Funny headline, since there was no one in the Times' "debate" who argued that Chávez left much of anything.
Mar
06
2013
AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers
By 150 Comments
Chavez squandered his nation's oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world's tallest building or his own branch of the Louvre. What kind of monster has priorities like that?
Jan
25
2013
Why Do Poor People Living in an Abandoned Skyscraper So Outrage the New Yorker?
By 97 Comments
For the New Yorker, rising standards of living for the Venezuelan poor don't matter much when weighed against the fact that rich people lost some property they weren't using.
Jan
11
2013
Hugo Chavez: Why Does He Hate Us?
By 30 Comments
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez might be excused for harboring some hard feelings towards a government that helped to try to overthrow your own. Which may be why U.S. reports rarely bring up the 2002 coup attempt–and when they do, treat Washington's involvement in it as another nutty Chavez conspiracy theory.
Jan
08
2013
Venezuelans Continue to Defy Washington Post
By 36 Comments
The Washington Post has never been fond of left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As serious questions mount about the state of Chavez's health, the paper's editorial page found it a good time to take another swipe.
Dec
13
2012
Does Hugo Chavez Keep Fooling Venezuelans?
By 56 Comments
The New York Times updates readers today (12/13/12) on the health status of left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and the political implications for his country. But the paper starts out by suggesting that the people who keep electing him must have some kind of problem. According to the Times' William Neuman, life in Venezuela is pretty dismal. Christmas tree shipments were fouled up, a government ice cream factory closed down, and "all of this happened while the economy was growing — before the slowdown many predict next year." He writes: Such frustrations are typical in Venezuela, for rich and poor [...]
Oct
10
2012
CNN Exposes 'Villain' Chavez's Dastardly Plot to House the Poor
By 23 Comments
Corporate media's depiction of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is often cartoonish, but the lead from David Frum's piece from CNN.com (10/9/12) takes the cake: Venezuela's authoritarian president Hugo Chavez is a villain out of a Batman movie: buffoonish and sinister in equal measure. You want to be careful about throwing around words like "buffoonish," though, when you're making arguments like "Hugo Chavez has laid Venezuela's economy to waste." Here's a chart of Venezuela's per capita GDP since 1999, when Chavez was first elected; since 2003, when Chavez took control of the national oil company from its self-enriching management, the purchasing [...]
Oct
10
2012
ABC's Very Efficient Anti-Chavez Propaganda
By 21 Comments
If you're listening to a report on an Official Enemy like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, you expect to hear a litany of misdeeds, real or imagined, about the leader in question. Just check out ABC World News (10/7/12), where anchor David Muir started out with this: And a fierce enemy of the United States, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, faces the toughest election of his life tonight. It's hard to know what Chavez has done to earn that label, but moments later Muir put this question to correspondent Jorge Ramos: MUIR: We all know that President Chavez has almost made it [...]
