Recommendations for the U.S. Left: No Middle Road on Venezuela
Weekend Edition March 14-16, 2014
Recommendations for the U.S. Left
No Middle Road on Venezuela
by SUREN MOODLIAR
~snip~
2. The U.S. left needs to radically up its game when it comes to the media
It is now common place to assert that the U.S. left is weakened by the relative absence of a significant left-wing media establishment. However, in its action planning and investment of admittedly modest resources, the left has failed to prioritize the strengthening of its presence in the media. The recent Venezuelan protests have demonstrated the ability of the right to construct a powerful narrative about the events and to polarize the global conversation. In particular, every action and counteraction is framed within this narrative. As a result, left-wing attention to facts and details is simply misplaced. For example, when Venezuelan opposition figures advocate tactics causing the beheading (!) of motorcyclists, the U.S. media treat them as legitimate actors on the national political stage instead of say their Middle Eastern or Pakistani counterparts who employ similar tactics.
The case of former General Angel Vivas is instructive. The U.S. media treats him as a folk hero who rejects the Bolivarian military and Cuban influence. Adding to his celebrity was the sudden inflation of his Twitter account to a quarter million followers. The Wall Street Journal (2/27/2014) celebrated the general with the headline, “Venezuelan Unrest Creates a New Folk Hero” < http://on.wsj.com/1f2gxrd >. It then carefully frames Angel Vivas’s lethal tutelage, “he offered practical advice on how to defend against attacks, particularly by gangs of pro-government thugs on motorcycles that were blamed for the shooting deaths of several protesters. The general recommended stringing up nylon or wire across streets to prevent riders from crossing.” Practical advice, indeed! The government’s attempt to arrest Vivas was then treated as another example of the revolution’s suppression of free speech.
We can only imagine the Journal’s response to similarly thuggish and lethal advice had it issued from say the #Occupy movement. Unfortunately, having effectively established its narrative, the establishment is free to use one standard for the government and another for the opposition. Even a cursory examination of mainstream framing of the events in Venezuela, reveals the key role played by extremists ensconced in the Journal in defining the narrative, at the outset of the current protests, before significant Venezuelan state responses and most U.S. media attention. Before Vivas’s 15 minutes of U.S. fame, Mary O’Grady, a Journal editor, was dictating the line via her weekly column. Her framing of the story is wholly consistent with Otto Reich’s playbook as evidenced by the title of her February 13th column, “Cuba Moves In for the Kill” < http://on.wsj.com/1c5Jo2S >. Absent proof, filled with undocumented assertions, O’Grady established a pretext for foreign intervention. After all, aren’t the Cubans are already intervening? O’Grady has already been challenged on many occasions for her fantasy-based journalism. Unusually, back in 2004, O’Grady received a firm rebuke in a letter from former President Jimmy Carter to the Journal advising her to respect the will of Venezuelan voters <http://bloom.bg/1n8lF3E >. Over the years, more exposés followed, but none of this seems to have fazed either the Journal’s management or the rest of the media establishment. Instead, it seems to have created space as tendentious reportage appearing in the New York Times (Simon Romero through 2011), the Washington Post (its Juan Forero has now joined O’Grady at the Journal < http://bit.ly/1c5N2d7 > ) and National Public Radio.
So, when President Maduro expressed his suspicion about the sudden closing of pro-government Twitter accounts and a small but sharp drop in number of his own Twitter followers, U.S. media framed it as an example of his paranoia and lack of technical sophistication. Ridicule followed in the media when Maduro called for the “liberation of Latin America from Twitter.” In contrast, the media is at pains to emphasize the Harvard education of leading right-wing opposition figure, Leopoldo López. Completely removed from the conversation are the close ties between Twitter and the U.S. Department of State. Specifically relevant to Venezuela is the co-sponsorship of the global Alliance of Youth Movements by all the major technology companies, including Twitter, Apple and Google (see their website at <http://movements.org > for evidence of the close relationship between the corporations and the State Department). A Condoleezza Rice aide, Jared Cohen, and Hillary Clinton’s State Department founded the alliance.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/14/no-middle-road-on-venezuela/
