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'Alternative facts'? Journalists from Venezuela to Turkey have seen this movie before
From Daniel Dale at the Toronto Star:
WASHINGTON—Lisseth Boon, a veteran investigative journalist in Venezuela, was in her Caracas office on Saturday when she came across the brazenly inaccurate claims from Donald Trump and his chief spokesman about the size of the crowds at his inauguration.
Her response: “Déjà vu.”
“That is so Venezuela,” she wrote on Twitter.
She was not alone.
“I immediately thought of Venezuela … (Former president Hugo) Chavez and his ministers always tried to create a parallel reality,” said investigative journalist Tamoa Calzadilla, who left the country for the U.S. in 2015 because of the oppressive media environment under Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro. “I’m so worried.”
Mahir Zeynalov, a prominent journalist deported from Turkey in 2014 for writing about a corruption scandal involving the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, felt a rapid recognition of his own.
“We have seen this movie before in Turkey. Whenever I see what Trump and his team are doing, I say, wait a minute, this is somehow familiar,” he said. “What has been happening in Turkey for years is now being replicated in the United States.”
-snip-
Fomenting doubt about the traditional providers of facts helps inoculate politicians such as Erdogan and Trump against future stories about their wrongdoing, Zeynalov said. He said they are especially sensitive to truths that call into question the supposed popular support they use to justify their governing.
“Crowd sizes, how many people applauded me, how many people voted for me — this is the essence of populist leaders: to make sure that the people who love them, who applaud them, are ‘bigger.’ Whenever you challenge that notion, you’re assaulting the crux of their argument,” he said.
-snip-
Her response: “Déjà vu.”
“That is so Venezuela,” she wrote on Twitter.
She was not alone.
“I immediately thought of Venezuela … (Former president Hugo) Chavez and his ministers always tried to create a parallel reality,” said investigative journalist Tamoa Calzadilla, who left the country for the U.S. in 2015 because of the oppressive media environment under Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro. “I’m so worried.”
Mahir Zeynalov, a prominent journalist deported from Turkey in 2014 for writing about a corruption scandal involving the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, felt a rapid recognition of his own.
“We have seen this movie before in Turkey. Whenever I see what Trump and his team are doing, I say, wait a minute, this is somehow familiar,” he said. “What has been happening in Turkey for years is now being replicated in the United States.”
-snip-
Fomenting doubt about the traditional providers of facts helps inoculate politicians such as Erdogan and Trump against future stories about their wrongdoing, Zeynalov said. He said they are especially sensitive to truths that call into question the supposed popular support they use to justify their governing.
“Crowd sizes, how many people applauded me, how many people voted for me — this is the essence of populist leaders: to make sure that the people who love them, who applaud them, are ‘bigger.’ Whenever you challenge that notion, you’re assaulting the crux of their argument,” he said.
-snip-
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