by Ben
Norton
Turning
facts on their head, CNN transformed the Venezuelan government’s
act of helping the poor into the complete opposite.
In the
article “Venezuelan President Called a ‘Grinch’ After
Government Toy Seizure” (12/11/16), CNN reporters Rafael Romo and
Jorge Luis Pérez liken President Nicolás Maduro to a dastardly
Grinch who is stealing toys from under children’s Christmas trees —
while he is doing precisely the contrary.
On Sunday,
December 11, the Venezuelan government confiscated nearly 4 million
toys from the country’s largest toy company. Venezuela’s consumer
protection agency said the company was hoarding the toys and planning
to sell them at inflated prices in order to maximize profits during
the Christmas season. The head of the consumer protection agency
charged that executives at the toy company, Kreisel-Venezuela, “don’t
care about our children’s right to have a merry Christmas.”
The
government announced it would give those toys to local committees in
impoverished neighborhoods to sell at below-market prices, so poor
families can afford gifts for their children. But given the
propensity of US corporate media to distort Venezuelan government
policies, it’s unsurprising that CNN discounted this explanation.
On CNN‘s
website, reporters Romo and Pérez cite anonymous “critics” who
claimed “many families won’t be able to buy the confiscated
toys for the holiday.” On the cable channel, the “critics”
claimed that “many families won’t have any toys to buy their
children.”
Who are
these “critics”? CNN cites just two people, both obscure Twitter
users, neither of whom claimed that families now won’t be able to
buy toys.
In fact, not
until more than halfway through the CNN video broadcast does the
report acknowledge the reason the Venezuelan government gives for
confiscating these toys. In the final seconds, CNN deigns to include
a clip from Maduro, who explains that his actions are precisely the
opposite of what the media conglomerate implied: “We have found
a case of criminal hoarding of 4 million toys, so the children of our
communities, barrios and government committees will for sure have
their toys for Christmas, thanks to our laws,” the Venezuelan
president declared. “This is like reinforcements for baby
Jesus.”
Similarly,
not until the sixth paragraph does the online article mention the
Venezuelan government’s rationale for confiscating the toys, after
Maduro is smeared as the “the Grinch that stole Christmas.”
(One cannot help but notice that, if anyone were to be compared to
the Grinch in this situation, it would be rich corporate executives
hoarding toys to maximize profit.)
The
deception does not end there. In the article, under a large subhead
titled “Worse than the Grinch,” Romo and Pérez write,
“‘Now what?’ a Venezuelan woman asked on Twitter, ‘is
[President] Nicolás Maduro the modern Grinch?'”
The tweet
the CNN reporters link to is from an unknown Twitter user with 165
followers, who goes by the name Joli. If readers were to click on the
link, they would soon see a thread in which Joli expressed surprise
that her tweet inspired a CNN article, adding, “Aunque, no soy
venezolana” — “Although, I am not Venezuelan.”
Clearly,
CNN‘s Romo and Pérez did not try to confirm the identity of the
person whose quote they framed their entire article around. Yet the
journalists continued with their shoddy reporting, writing, “Another
Twitter user told CNN that the Venezuelan government is ‘worse than
the Grinch.'”
By “told
CNN,” Romo and Pérez do not mean they interviewed this person;
they mean another unknown Twitter user with 500 followers who goes by
the name Mivida tweeted at Romo.
The tweet
they linked to, which had no favorites or retweets, also smears
Venezuela’s government as a “narco regime” (although that part
of the tweet is not cited in the article). A quick glance at Mivida’s
Twitter feed shows that it is full of right-wing memes.
CNN‘s
“Grinch” report exemplifies a popular new technique: Twitter has
become the lazy journalist’s favorite tool. With millions of users
expressing millions of different opinions, ostensibly “neutral”
news outlets can cite tweets that confirm their biases as putative
“evidence” that the public feels a particular way on an issue–a
way that almost always just so happens to reflect and serve powerful
interests.
Random
tweets from unknown users can hence be quoted as examples of
anonymous “critics” who echo corporate and government propaganda
and rehash conventional wisdom. CNN‘s reporting is a case study in
how to further sling mud at an elected socialist government that has
for years faced aggression from the United States.
The US
government, the interests of which major corporate media networks
like CNN so obediently echo, has supported right-wing opposition
groups in Venezuela for well over a decade. In fact, in 2002, the US
even backed a coup that toppled the democratically elected government
of Hugo Chávez, and temporarily replaced it with a right-wing,
US-allied regime headed by businessman Pedro Carmona. The same media
that continues to demonize Venezuela with outright lies today helped
sell the coup then (Extra! Update, 6/02)—although Chávez was so
popular, masses of Venezuelans filled the streets and demanded that
their elected socialist leader be returned to office, promptly
overturning the short-lived 2002 putsch.
The CNN
video playlist included with the above article demonstrates this
propagandistic tenor. The videos are all extremely negative, and
blame “Venezuela’s economic disaster” solely on its
government.
If this kind
of sloppy reporting were done on a US ally, it could ruin a
journalist’s career. But as American economist Mark Weisbrot
(Guardian, 3/10/12) put it more than four years ago:
Such
is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela—it is probably the
most lied-about country in the world—that a journalist can say
almost anything about Chávez or his government and it is unlikely to
be challenged, so long as it is negative.
More
recently, an investigation in The Nation (6/22/16) by Gabriel Hetland
found that while “Venezuela is in the midst of a severe
crisis…mainstream media have consistently misrepresented and
significantly exaggerated the severity of the crisis.”
This
suffocating climate lets major media networks get away with
portraying progressive government policies that are infinitely more
reminiscent of the deeds of Robin Hood, or even of the magnanimous
Santa Claus himself, than they are of the greedy green Christmas
monster.
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