In Death as in Life, Chavez Target of Media Scorn

[Judi Lynn]

In Death as in Life, Chavez Target of Media Scorn

His independence, help for Venezuela's poor will not be forgiven

By Peter Hart

Apr 01 2013

Venezuela’s left-wing populist President Hugo Chávez died on Tuesday, March 5, after a two-year battle with cancer. If world leaders were judged by the sheer volume of corporate media vitriol and misinformation about their policies, Chávez would be in a class of his own.

Shortly after Chávez won his first election in 1998, the U.S. government deemed him a threat to U.S. interests—an image U.S. media eagerly played up. When a coup engineered by Venezuelan business and media elites removed Chávez from power, many leading U.S outlets praised the move (Extra!, 6/02). The New York Times (4/13/02), calling it a “resignation,” declared that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.” The Chicago Tribune (4/14/02) cheered the removal of a leader who had been “praising Osama bin Laden”—an absurdly false charge.

But that kind of reckless rhetoric was evidently permissible in media discussions about Chávez. Seven years later, CNN (1/15/09) hosted a discussion with Demo-cratic strategist Doug Schoen, where he and host John Roberts discussed whether or not Chávez was worse than Osama bin Laden. As Schoen put it, “He’s given Al-Qaeda and Hamas an open invitation to come to Caracas.”

There were almost no limits to over-heated media verbiage about Chávez. In a single news article, Newsweek (11/2/09) managed to compare him to Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. (Chávez had built a movie studio, which is the sort of thing dictators apparently do.) ABC (World News, 10/7/12) called him a “fierce enemy of the United States,” the Washington Post (10/16/06) an “autocratic demagogue.” Fox News (12/5/05) said that his government was “really Communism”—despite the fact that he was repeatedly returned to office in internationally certified elections (Extra!, 11–12/06) that Jimmy Carter deemed “the best in the world” (Guardian, 10/3/12).

More:
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/in-death-as-in-life-chavez-target-of-media-scorn-2/

[Socialistlemur]

1. Communism isn't incompatible with democracy

I've found a common mistake, people link communism with dictatorship. But we should look at it as a two axis set. Communists to the left, liberals to the right. Above we pace democracy and below we place tyranny. My observation is that communism isn't achievable, so that side is empty. But we see hovering near true communism all sorts of dictatorships. These interestingly can function with some private enterprise, for example the joint ventures used by Cuba. As the privatization increases but the government remains in control and holds near absolute central power (china and Russia today) I say those are fascists. So it's something he has to draw up in at least two dimensions. The third one would be populism. Theoretical analysis shows communism wors with small communities, and these can be democratic. Once they grow beyond say 200 members they can't hold together and move to the dictatorship phase. Anyway, this is my observation.