Looking at a June 28 New York Times report that the "Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup," A Tiny Revolution blogger Bernard Chazelle (6/28/09) writes that "from the byline alone, you know this is going to be good": "Elisabeth Malkin, in Mexico City, with reporting by Simon Romero from Caracas." To Chazelle this all "makes perfect sense since, as we all know, Mexico City and Caracas are the two major cities in Honduras. (Too bad they had no reporter in Bangkok. I hope the Pulitzer committee doesn't notice.)"

Moving on to the piece's actual content [since altered by the Times], Chazelle responds to the peculiar opening line stating that "The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the army on Sunday after pressing ahead with plans for a referendum":

A referendum? OK, but for what? "... a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election"

OK, so we ask his opponents what the referendum is about. How about asking a more neutral observer? Like? "Mr. Zelaya pressed ahead with plans for a nonbinding referendum that opponents said would open the way for him to rewrite the constitution to run for re-election despite a one-term limit."

Yes, I think we got that point. Opponents of the referendum really don't like that referendum. But what's the referendum about? I'll go out on a limb and, on the basis of what our crack reporters have told us, I'll take a wild guess: "Can I, el Caudillo Zelaya, run for president again and again and again? Yes or no?"

Let's check with Dr. Wikipedia to see how well I'm doing: "Incumbent President Manuel Zelaya wanted to hold a non-binding referendum on whether to convene congress to modify the constitution."

So, "it's non-binding, meaning that it has no enforcement power," and "it's not a referendum to change the constitution," but only "a referendum to convene a constitutional assembly to modify the constitution." No wonder the Times lede has Chazelle reduced to this: "Hmm... me very confused."

One thing Chazelle is sure of: "There's no way this would have happened if the U.S. had said no. And if anyone doubts there's bad blood between Honduras and the U.S., one has to go back only nine months for Honduras' decision to delay the accreditation of the U.S. ambassador in solidarity with Bolivia."

Anyone who followed the results of Venezuela's regional elections last Sunday will know that President Hugo Chavez's party won 17 out of 22 contests up for grabs, garnering 52.5 percent of the popular vote to the opposition's 41.1 percent. Unless, that is, they were relying on New York Times Latin America correspondent Simon Romero.

Despite a well-documented pattern of media misinformation about Chavez, many media outlets, including L.A. Times and CNN, conceded the fact of Chavez allies' victory in Sunday's races.

But not Romero!

Yesterday, the Times published an article by Romero titled, "Chavez Supporters Suffer Defeat in State and Regional Races."

The article's lede:

President Hugo Chávez’s supporters suffered a stinging defeat in several state and municipal races on Sunday, with the opposition retaining power in oil-rich Zulia, the country’s most populous state, and winning crucial races here in the capital.

Today, the Times ran a follow-up piece penned by Romero under the headline "Once Considered Invincible, Chavez Takes a Blow," as well as an editorial that argued that "In Sunday's state and municipal elections Venezuelans showed just how fed up they are with his government's authoritarianism and incompetence."

Over at Narco News, Al Giordano takes on Romero's peculiar alternate reality of Venezuela's vote:

Imagine if elections for all 50 state governors in the United States were held on a single election day and 74 percent of those seats (or 37 out of 50 governorships) went to one political party's candidates. Imagine also that the victorious party's candidates had won 52.5 percent of all votes to just 41 percent for the opposition (the technical definition of an electoral landslide is a victory of ten percentage points or more).

If a New York Times reporter--or any reporter--then wrote the story of the election results and called it a "stinging defeat" for the victorious party, wouldn't he be laughed off of his beat?

But then again, if the New York Times had any journalistic standards when it came to reporting on Venezuela, Romero likely would have been laughed off his beat long ago....