I recently read an International NY Times piece about Venezuela here in Brazil where I am based. It is by SA Consalvi, a Venezuelan conservative. I did a little more research on the internet, couldn't find it in English, then found some pieces critiquing the NY Times coverage of Venezuela.
As they point out, Consalvi's views are typical, with W. Neumann providing the rest of the coverage. Shallow and almost entirely false, they are typical of ideological thinking, and worse, propaganda. Chavez has helped incentivize co-operative enterprise there, and many of the poor have benefited.
Mark Vorpahl in Counterpunch writes that UN ECLAC indicates that Venezuela has reduced inequality more than any other Latin American country in recent years. Unemployment has been reduced significantly, extreme poverty has been reduced, housing is improving. All this in stark contrast to the US, no less.
According to studies by the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Venezuela ranks first in a list of
12 Latin American countries that have reduced inequalities amongst
their members.
In contrast, in the U.S., according to the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO), between the years 2003 – 2005, $400 billion in
pre-tax dollars was shifted from the bottom 95 percent to the top 5
percent, costing the bottom 95 percent households $3,660 each. While
there was a drop in inequality for a short time after the stock
market crash as a result of depleted stock portfolios, it has again
accelerated. Since 2010, the top 1% has captured 93 percent of income
gains.
When Chavez was first elected president, unemployment was 16.1
percent. Today it has been reduced to 6.5 percent (1) with one of the
highest minimum wages in Latin America and food stipends. In
contrast, in the U.S., 23 million remain unemployed or underemployed
while the minimum wage has dramatically fallen behind the cost of
living.
In Venezuela extreme poverty has shrunk from 21 percent in 1999,
to 6.9 percent today. (2) For the United States, the movement is in
just the opposite direction. According to the Census Bureau last year
another 2.6 million Americans fell below the official poverty line on
top of the 46.2 million already there. This resulted in the highest
number of citizens in poverty since the Census Bureau started
tracking the figure 52 years ago.
Millions of U.S. families have been kicked onto the streets
because of the high rate of forecloses. There are no foreclosures in
Venezuela. In fact, the money that used to go into the pockets of its
wealthy elite is now being used to build hundreds of thousands of
dignified homes for those in need.
By Murray Polner
Murray Polner has written for many publications. His most
recent book, written with Thomas Woods Jr., is “We Who Dared Say No
To War”.
The original article can be found here:
http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/10/the-times-vs-hugo-chavez/
New York Times Coverage of Venezuelan Elections was Poor
Hugo Chávez won his third straight presidential election this
past weekend, and as the New York Times correspondent
William Neumann put it in his latest article, “Chávez
Wins New Term in Venezuela, Holding Off Surge by Opposition,”:
“Though his margin of victory was much narrower than in past
elections, he still won handily.” By more than 10 percent, Chávez
defeated center-right candidate for the Justice First party, Henrique
Capriles.
The problem with Neumann’s article, and his pre-election article
“Fears
Persist Among Venezuelan Voters Ahead of Election”
is that he said nothing about Capriles’ campaign while providing
considerable space to hearsay and accusations he, and Times
editors, didn’t back up with examples. What resulted was clear
cases of anti-Chávez hysteria and poor journalism.
In Neumann’s pre-election article he wrote that “polls diverge
widely, with some predicting a victory for Mr. Chávez and others
showing a race that is too close to call,” but he offers no
examples of these “too close to call” polls. When the Center
for Economic and Policy Research looked at
available data they found that “Capriles [had] a 5.7 percent
probability of winning the election.”
And just as Neumann doesn’t provide any examples of those who
have “anxiety” about ”a new electronic voting system that many
Venezuelans fear might be used by the government to track those who
vote against the president” there are no examples provided of
“[m]any government workers” whose names “were made public after
they signed a petition for an unsuccessful 2004 recall referendum to
force Mr. Chávez out of office” and subsequently ”lost their
jobs.” This claim has been circulating for nearly ten years, and if
Neumann has proof it occurred he should certainly share it. That
would be more newsworthy than the unfounded fears of unknown persons.
The fearmongering does not stop there. Neumann also claims,
without providing any supporting evidence, that “Government workers
are frequently required to attend pro-Chávez rallies.” Despite
having won three successive presidential elections by large margins,
and whose voter base continues to grow, it seems Neumann cannot
accept the fact that Venezuelans vote for and “attend pro-Chávez
rallies” because they actually support the man and his
policies.
Another problem with Neumann’s articles is that, on one hand of
Neumann’s Anti-Chávez argument, Chávez has sown “fear” and
rules by intimidation. This is why nearly eight million Venezuelans
voted for him—an increase by more than half a million votes, or an
almost ten percent gain in votes since the 2006 election. Then, on
the other hand, we are told that Chávez rules by bribery. Neumann
claims that the reason “it has been harder for Mr. Capriles to dent
the strong support for Mr. Chávez in rural areas” is the
government spending on poverty, which Neumann refers to as “the
government largess [Mr. Chávez] doles out with abandon.”
In his post-election article Neumann continues with his bias,
which would be more appropriate in the opinion section, when he
offers advice to Capriles. Neumann warns that ”the opposition is a
fragile coalition with a history of destructive infighting,
especially after an election defeat,” and that “Mr. Capriles will
have to keep this fractious amalgam of parties from the left, right
and center together in order to take advantage of the new ground they
have gained.”
While noting that “Mr. Chávez has trumpeted his programs to
help the poor,” or the so-called “government largess” which
Chávez “has pointed to a sharp reduction in the number of people
living in poverty” as proof that he is delivering the goods,
Neumann tries to explain this not so much as an actual agenda by
Chávez but due to the fact that the president “has governed during
a phenomenal rise in oil prices, which have soared from $10 in 1998,
the year before he took office, to more than $100 in recent years and
the high $80s now, pouring huge amounts of revenue into Venezuela.”
When it comes to Neumann, Chávez can’t win for losing.
Neumann also spends an inordinate amount of time talking about
Chávez’s health. In fact, he provides more coverage of that, as
well as criticizing Chávez at every turn and giving voice to
unqualified accusations, than he does talking about the actual
campaigns of the candidates. While Neumann writes in his
post-election article that Capriles “campaigned almost nonstop”
he doesn’t say what Capriles campaigned on, and if he provided his
readers with such information they might actually get a glimpse into
why the opposition fared much better than the past two elections.
In an article published this past April, Reuters
wrote that “Henrique Capriles defines himself as a center-left
‘progressive’ follower of the business-friendly but
socially-conscious Brazilian economic model,” while Global
Post wrote that “Capriles has based his
campaign on improving education, which he sees as a long-term
solution to the country’s insecurity and deep poverty,” and that
”Capriles’ methods are not to shout down Chavez — indeed, he
praises many of the president’s ideas.” Far from being an
“opposition” candidate, Capriles tried to appear as Chávez-lite.
New York Times coverage of the presidential election in
Venezuela was bizarre, but typical. The political leanings of the
“paper of record” are notorious for reflecting the views and
interests of the political and economic establishment. And with
Chávez not being an ally of the U.S. government and business
community, and is instead encouraging the regional independence that
has been unfolding for the past decade much to their ire, and with
Chávez expected to and having “won handily,” it comes as no
surprise that the Venezuelan election process, which former American
president Jimmy
Carter has hailed as the “best in the world,”
would get picked over by the New York Times as being the
results of intimidation and bribery.
By Michael McGehee
The original article can be found here:
http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/10/new-york-times-coverage-of-venezuelan...
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