In his latest "Dispatch from the Bolivarian Revolution", blogger Eric Wingerter (BoRev.net, 7/18/09) asks, "Man oh man, how bad does AP reporting have to get before a group of Latin American studies professors from top U.S. universities decides they need to take out a FULL-PAGE AD in the Columbia Journalism Review to respond?"

His answer is "Bad bad"--as illustrated in the ad's text:

The Associated Press has breached basic journalistic principles with these false reports:

[Hugo] Chávez initially suggested the synagogue attack might have been carried out by Jews eager to portray his government as anti-Semitic.

—AP February 8, 2009

Only five months after urging world leaders to back their armed struggle, he [Chávez] said that armed guerrilla movements are "history."

—AP June 10, 2008

THESE STATEMENTS ARE FALSE, and on both occasions, the AP has admitted that they are false.

Saying that Chávez "never called on anyone to support the armed struggle of the FARC—rather, he had called on the FARC to abandon armed struggle," the ad goes on to explain how, "far from blaming Jews from an attack on a synagogue, he denounced the attack as anti-Semitic and took prompt action to find and arrest the attackers."

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Corrupt Data: Taking On the Claim that Chávez Is On the Take" (11–12/06) by Gregory Wilpert.

Also listen to letter signatory NYU history professor Greg Grandin on FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Greg Grandin on Honduras Coup" (7/3/09).

Newsweek has a rather curious take this week (7/20/09) on the Honduras coup in a short piece headlined "The World Goes Bananas Over Honduras":

Poor, hot and fractious, Honduras--the original banana republic--rarely draws a second look from the global community. But on June 28, when President Manuel Zelaya was yanked out of bed by the military and bundled into exile, the world took notice. International leaders unanimously decried the "assault on democracy." The Organization of American States expelled Honduras, the only nation since Cuba to be so disgraced. Venezuela even threatened to send in troops to reinstate Zelaya. But in the rush to judgment, heads of state showed selective zeal for democracy, at best. "It's odd that world leaders have determined that coups can only be committed against presidents, [but] not against Congress or the courts," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan diplomat. In recent years, executives in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have stacked their benches and legislatures with yes men and muzzled the media--while international leaders looked the other way. And unlike those aspiring autocrats, the Honduran military could reasonably argue that it was acting in good faith by ejecting a leader hellbent on seeking re-election--despite an ironclad constitutional clause preventing such a move. Of course, it's a good thing when world leaders stand up for the people. But if it's going to mean much, they should try to be consistent.

Actually, it's not odd at all that world leaders are condemning Honduras as a coup but not Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador or Nicaragua; generally, coups are state takeovers by a small group with military/police backing, which hasn't happened anywhere in Latin America besides Honduras since...oh right, the anti-Chavez coup in Venezuela by folks on Arria's side.

And the Honduran military can't justify its coup by saying the leader they ejected was "hellbent on seeking re-election" for a number of reasons. First of all, it's clear that Zelaya wasn't even seeking re-election, since the actual advisory vote on amending the constitution was to happen in the same fall election that would choose Zelaya's successor. But the very word "election" in that excuse should give you a hint that perhaps there's something wrong with the logic involved. Asking voters if they want to vote on whether to change the constitution can hardly be considered such a threat to democracy that the military has to suspend that democracy in order to defend it.

It's notable that all the countries Newsweek listed have leftist governments aligned with Venezuela, while right-wing Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, who not long ago engineered a change to his country's constitution in order enable his re-election, didn't merit a mention--or much coverage at all when it happened, for that matter--nor did Venezuela's anti-Chavez coup, which U.S. media heartily endorsed. Perhaps the issue Newsweek ought to be probing is U.S. media's "selective zeal" for Latin American democracy.

Robin Varghese's 3 Quarks Daily link (6/30/09) to a Boston Review piece purporting that, "over the past four years, Venezuela has witnessed alarming signs of state-directed anti-Semitism, including a 2005 Christmas declaration by President Hugo Chávez himself," has engendered some homespun media criticism from a commenter logged-in as "Pepito," who argues that "this canard about Chávez and Chavismo being anti-Semitic has been debunked several times in the past, but it comes backs very often."

In response to the excerpt's lead example of "15 heavily armed men" who attacked a Caracas synagogue, "held down two guards, robbed the premises, and desecrated the temple" with swastika graffiti, Pepito illustrates exactly "how ridiculously inaccurate that article is" with "a couple of points":

Not mentioned in that article was that the attack on the synagogue was perpetrated by a band of thieves led by a night guard who had worked at the place for years and who used the anti-Semitic slogans so they could throw off the police investigation. They were captured a few days later with a hundred thousand dollars they had stolen from the synagogue's vault.

After the attack on the synagogue, Chávez himself talked live on TV to Elias Farache, president of one of Venezuela's main Jewish associations, and gave him his word that he was not going to tolerate anti-Semitic attacks in his country and that he was going to protect the Jewish community. Farache himself denied the government's supposed culpability in the attack....

Also, the article does not mention that Fred Pressner, president of [the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela, a group] representative of Venezuela's Jewish community, repeatedly complained to the Wiesenthal Center, asking them to consult with the Venezuelan Jewish community before accusing Chávez of anti-Semitism.

Pepito's parting shot at 3 Quarks Daily and the Boston Review: "Pointing the finger at Chávez's government for some isolated anti-Semitic events in the street while ignoring the fact that for many years (and before Chávez was elected) there have been small groups with anti-Semitic leanings (usually formed by conservative ultra-Catholics) is disingenuous, to say the least." See the FAIR Media Advisory: "Editing Chavez to Manufacture a Slur: Some Outlets Spread Spurious Charges of Anti-Semitism" (1/23/06).

Author and blogger Nikolas Kozloff has a BuzzFlash posting (7/1/09) about how, if you "read or listen to the mainstream media these days,"

you get the impression that [last] Sunday's coup in Honduras was all about a simple disagreement over the constitutionality of presidential term limits. But as the coup unfolds, it's becoming clear that the authorities want something more: the restoration of Honduras' conservative political order and an end to President Manuel Zelaya's independent foreign policy that had reached out to leftist countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.

As part of their effort to consolidate power, officials have moved quickly to restrain the free flow of information, in particular by cracking down on progressive-leaning media. Only TV stations sympathetic to the newly installed coup regime have been left alone, while others have been shut down. The climate of repression is similar to what we have seen elsewhere in Latin America in recent years. Specifically, there are eerie parallels to the April 2002 coup in Venezuela when the briefly installed right-wing government imposed a media blackout to further its own political ends.

Not that you would have read anything on that from prominent U.S. reporters. They reserve their free speech defenses exclusively for outlets helping the fight against official U.S. enemies--deserving or not. See the FAIR Media Advisory: "Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs: Distorting the Venezuelan Media Story" (5/25/07).

Observing that Latinobarómetro's 2008 report on Latin American public opinion again "went entirely unreported in almost all of the world's major media outlets," with "only small snippets selectively analyzed by writers at the Economist, Christian Science Monitor and Washington Times," Latin American history major Kevin Young's ZNet analysis of the survey (5/27/09) gives some probable reasons:

Washington's contempt for the Chávez and Morales governments is readily apparent given frequent Bush administration denunciations and threats directed at the two leaders, U.S. support for violent opposition groups and coup attempts in Venezuela and Bolivia, and its ongoing and well-documented (though still highly secretive) channeling of funds to opposition groups in the two countries. Conversely, the governments of countries like Colombia and Mexico draw frequent praise from U.S. government leaders and media analysts and also receive large sums of U.S. taxpayers' money in the form of military and/or economic aid. Colombia ($657 million) and Mexico ($579 million) top all Latin American countries in total.

That U.S. media consistently praises official U.S. friends and condemns official enemies goes hand-in-glove with their refusal to acknowledge polling that directly contradicts their justifications for U.S. Latin American policy. Young lists Latinobarómetro results showing "Hugo Chávez's Venezuela is the third 'freest' country among the 18 surveyed," while "the three large countries whose governments remain closely aligned with the United States--Colombia, Mexico and Peru--rank well below Venezuela in every category" polled, such as "Democracy [in my country] guarantees the freedom to participate in politics," "Democracy guarantees freedom of expression, always and in all parts [of the country]" and "The most effective way to change things is by voting to elect those who defend my position."

See the recent issue of FAIR magazine Extra!: "FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington's Needs: FAIR Finds Editors Downplaying Colombia’s Abuses, Amplifying Venezuela’s" (2/09) by Steve Rendall, Daniel Ward & Tess Hall

NACLA has Latin America writer Daniel Denvir's review (5/11/09) of a new Bart Jones biography of Hugo Chávez. In it, Denvir's reasons for having "never been a big reader of biographies"--"the product of our most unfortunate and idol-indulging tendencies"--give way to the fact that some leaders' "images become proxies for larger ideological, social and cultural debates--often to the point of caricature." Denvir's contention that "a good biography can take on this echo chamber residuum and tell a more reality-based story" becomes that much more urgent when, "in the case of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, this is a politically necessary task":

The New York Times editorial board claims Chávez aids guerrillas. Ethically challenged televangelist Pat Robertson called for his assassination. And when talking heads aren't calling him a terrorist, they take up the Venezuelan right wing’s cartoonish image of Chávez as hyperbolic and verbose buffoon. Admittedly, recent conservative attempts to provoke hysteria over the Chávez-Obama handshake at the Summit of the Americas seem to have fallen flat.

The Jones book crucially "takes on mainstream media coverage of Chávez and explains the Bolivarian Revolution's victories--and thus its high level of public support" while it also "acknowledges that Chávez is a leader with serious faults... but methodically knocks down the charge that he is a dictator." Denvir further notes that "conservative talk radio and mainstream media have eagerly spilled copious ink cataloguing Chávez's sins. Meanwhile, far less attention is given to President Álvaro Uribe and the Colombian political establishment's ties to right-wing paramilitaries, who actually kill their political opponents," and suggests that "a comparative Lexis-Nexis study on the subject would be enlightening." Well... see Extra!: "FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington's Needs: FAIR Finds Editors Downplaying Colombia's Abuses, Amplifying Venezuela's" (2/09) by Steve Rendall, Daniel Ward & Tess Hall

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....