The corporate media in this country is such propagandistic garbage. Murtaza Hussain, being as AWESOME as usual, shows us how the Washington Post is as much of a tool of US imperial and corporate interests as it gets. The Washington Post cites members of Inter-American Dialogue several times in an anti-Venezuela article. What the authors failed to explain is that the Inter-American Dialogue is a think-tank whose members happen to include several officials from Venezuela’s previous government – the same one deposed by Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution. Even more distressingly, the Dialogue counts among its funders organizations such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, the U.S. government through USAID, and the embassies of Canada, Mexico and Guatemala among others. That these groups have distinct political and financial interests in Venezuela casts some doubt on the impartiality of the viewpoints their funded analysts produce. Indeed, a 2006 diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks uncovered the fact that U.S. officials were planning to implement a “5-point strategy” to undermine the Chavez government, specifically using USAID as a means to accomplish this. That USAID also happens to be a prime funder of the Inter-American Dialogue raises some serious questions about its unstated mission in the country. For his part, Shifter has become a high-profile public critic of the Maduro administration in the mainstream press, where his organization is still depicted as a benign, “nonpartisan policy group”. Indeed, a 2012 study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) documented both Shifter’s political and corporate connections as well as the breadth of his reach in the media, remarking that, “What he says is very likely indistinguishable from the views of the monied interests backing his think tank.“ His appearance in the Washington Post last week was far from an aberration. He — along with others from the Dialogue — are regularly cited in articles on the region and Shifter himself has penned articles for the New York Times, Foreign Policy and others. ... That the sources of this supposedly expert analysis are funded by corporations and governments openly hostile to the Venezuelan government, and which have even attempted its overthrow in the past, would appear to be a fairly glaring omission. ... None of this is written necessarily as a defence of the Venezuelan government or a commentary on events in that country, but rather to demonstrate the fundamental incapacity of the mainstream media to cover this story in a way that is not corrupted by corporate and political interests. The corrosive influence of corporations and government in the news media has long been documented. The establishment press has demonstrated time and again its reflex to serve as a tool of powerful vested interests, and to act essentially as the communications arm of U.S. foreign policy. The Washington Post‘s coverage is just the most glaring and recent example of such behavior. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/03/venezuela-establishment-media-enables-powerful-vested-interests/
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 00:30:59 +0000
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