Decade of Propaganda? The BBC’s Reporting of Venezuela.

[Peace Patriot]

A Decade of Propaganda? The BBC’s Reporting of Venezuela.


December 14th 2009, by Lee Salter - Venezuelanalysis.com

Researchers at the University of the West of England, UK, have exposed ongoing and systematic bias in the BBC’s news reporting on Venezuela. Dr Lee Salter and Dr Dave Weltman analysed ten years of BBC reports on Venezuela since the first election of Hugo Chavez to the presidency in an ongoing research project, and their findings so far show that the BBC’s reporting falls short of its legal commitment to impartiality, truth and accuracy.

The researchers looked at 304 BBC reports published between 1998 and 2008 and found that only 3 of those articles mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the Chavez administration. The BBC has failed to report adequately on any of the democratic initiatives, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives, or poverty reduction programmes. Mission Robinson, the greatest literacy programme in human history received only a passing mention.

According to the research the BBC seems never to have accepted the legitimacy of the President, insinuating throughout the sample that Chavez lacks electoral support, at one point comparing him to Hitler (‘Venezuela’s Dictatorship’ 31/08/99).

This undermining of Chavez must be understood in the context of his electoral record: his legitimacy is questioned despite the fact that he has been elected several times with between 56% and 60% of the vote. In contrast victorious parties in UK elections since 1979 have achieved between 35.3% and 43.9% of the vote; the current UK Prime Minister was appointed by his predecessor, and many senior members of the British cabinet have never been elected. It will come as no surprise that their legitimacy is never questioned by the BBC.

Of particular note is the BBC’s response to the military coup in 2002. BBC News published nine articles on the coup on 12th April 2002, all of which were based on the coup leaders’ version of events, who were, alongside the “opposition”, championed as saviours of “the nation”. Although BBC News did report the coup, the only time it mentioned the word “coup” was as an allegation of government officials and of Chavez’s daughter.

The “official” BBC explanation was that Chavez ‘fell’, ‘quit’, or ‘resigned’ (at best at the behest of the military) after his ‘mishandling’ of “strikes” (which, as Hardy (2007) reminds us, were actually management lockouts) and demonstrations in which his supporters had fired on and killed protestors. In reporting this latter, Adam Easton, the BBC’s correspondent in Caracas wrote ‘Film footage also caught armed supporters of Mr Chavez firing indiscriminately at the marchers’ (‘Venezuela’s New Dawn’). The footage in question was broadcast by an oligarch’s channel that had supported the coup and was shown to have been manipulated.

Given that Chavez had won two elections and a constitutional referendum before the coup, it is surprising that the BBC privileged the coup leaders’ version of events. The democratic, restorative intentions of the coup leaders were unquestioned.

In ‘Venezuelan media: “It's over!”’ the BBC allows the editor of El Universal to declare unopposed "We have returned once again to democracy!". Perhaps more significantly, in ‘Venezuela's political disarray’ the BBC’s Americas regional editor chose to title a subheading ‘Restoring democracy’. ‘Oil prices fall as Chavez quits’ explains that Chavez quit as a result of a ‘popular uprising’.

Crucially, all of the vox pops used in the nine articles were from “opposition” supporters, and the only voices in support of Chavez were from government officials, Chavez’s daughter or Cuba. It is therefore reasonable to infer from BBC reports that ordinary Venezuelans did not support Chavez; whilst the coup was inaccurately reported as ‘popular’, the counter coup was not.

The researchers hypothesised that one of the factors underpinning the inaccurate reporting of Venezuela was the BBC’s adherence to the ideological outlook of the Venezuelan elite. Against the weight of historical research into Venezuelan history, the BBC underpins its reporting with the “exceptionalism thesis” – the idea that Venezuela was the exception among Latin American nations in that its democracy was robust enough to resist dictatorship.

However, historical research suggests this idea is wrong. As Professors Ellner and Salas explain, those who referred to the exceptionalism of Venezuela,

'Failed … to draw the connection between political exclusion and the related phenomena of clientelism, on one hand, and the violation of human rights, electoral manipulation, and corruption, on the other. Indeed, they took the legitimacy of the institutional mechanisms that guaranteed stability for granted. The same defects of electoral fraud, corruption, and repression that scholars pointed to as contributing to the crisis of the 1990s had been apparent in previous decades'

Certainly the BBC fails to recognise this, and its ignorance of the extreme poverty afflicting so many Venezuelans mitigates against any adequate of understanding of Venezuelan politics. Because the BBC cannot “see” these factors, the Bolivarian Revolution cannot be understood as a response to decades of poverty and oppression.

Rather, the BBC personalises the Bolivarian movement in Hugo Chavez, himself emerging from nowhere and then imposing himself on Venezuela, as if there was no movement, and as if no elections took place.

For example, the 2004 referendum victory is referred to as ‘an extraordinary turn around, and one that defies easy explanation’ (‘Analysis: Venezuela at the Crossroads’ 17/8/04). Of course, the victory appeared “extraordinary” only to persons ignorant of the underlying issues affecting Venezuelan politics.

Consequently, Chavez himself becomes the cause of political conflict. In the world of the BBC it is impossible for class, poverty, human rights abuse or corruption to cause political conflict – the BBC cannot understand the impact of a poverty rate of 70% in 1995 or the fact that a year before Chavez’s first election victory 67% of Venezuelans earned less than $2 a day.

Rather, Venezuelans are painted as mindless sheep being led by a Pied Piper figure, responding only to his call for them to agitate. In the BBC’s world, social and political “divisions” exist only because of Chavez.

For the BBC, the only legitimate representatives of Venezuelan appear to be the unelected oligarchs behind the “opposition”. It is the “opposition” that is Venezuela. ‘Opposition leaders in Venezuela’, according to the BBC, appeal ‘to the international community to intervene to protect democratic rule’.

When democracy was “restored” by a military coup and the imposition of a dictator, the BBC reported that “Venezuela has looked not to an existing politician, but to the head of the business leaders’ association”. When a majority of Venezuelans elect Chavez it is not an act of “Venezuela”, yet when a CIA-backed military coup imposes a corrupt oligarchy, it reflects the will of the whole of Venezuela; not the will of an elite class, but of Venezuela itself.

There is an argument that the inaccuracy and bias of the BBC’s reporting results from the experience of BBC journalists, themselves being from a particular class background living in well-to-do parts of Caracas. From this point of view, they simply don’t see the reality of the situation. If so, it would confirm Charles Hardy’s claim that, we tend to be given ‘the perspective of an international correspondent… who works in a downtown office building of an opposition newspaper and lives in an apartment in a wealthy neighborhood’.

The big question, however, is whether the BBC can be trusted to report adequately on Latin America. Certainly from their latest reports on Evo Morales’s recent victory in Bolivia it seems unlikely. In the meantime, their audience remains woefully ill-informed.

The research programme is ongoing and the researchers arrive in Caracas at the end of December for the next stage of the project. For further information contact Lee Salter, [e-mail]

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5003

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Just want to mention that I have noticed the BBC bias against the Chavez government and, by implication, against the Venezuelan people who have repeatedly voted for that government, in big numbers, in honest and aboveboard elections. It has sometimes astounded me, it was so bad. And I'm glad these researchers and analysts undertook a study of it. We, who are interested in the truth, have enough to do, dealing with our corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies and their "Big Lie" campaign against Chavez here in the U.S. That's why I don't often comment on this similar bias at the BBC. It has destroyed my one-time belief that BBC was a better news service than we had here. It is certainly not, on Latin American issues.

[Downwinder]

1. Brings into question BBC's reporting in other areas. n/t

[EFerrari]

2. Ask Pilger about the BBC.

:shrug:

[Braulio]

4. Yep

Their reporting about the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the Middle East and Israel in general is full of crap.

[ChangoLoa]

3. Do you know WHO announced that Chavez had resigned on the 12th april?

Do you know WHO announced that Chavez had resigned on the 12th april? Lucas Rincon, the Venezuelan army's top official. He was loyal to Chavez and promoted by him after that event.

"The “official” BBC explanation was that Chavez ‘fell’, ‘quit’, or ‘resigned’"

Actually, that was the "official" explanation of Rincon that day.

As you can understand, not only golpistas thought or/and said that Chavez had resigned in that particular moment (12th april).

In fact, since there was no truth commission or trial about the whole coup, there's still no official explanation.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Good journalism would produce a headline like "Opposition claims democracy is being restored."

Not...

In ‘Venezuelan media: “It's over!”’ the BBC allows the editor of El Universal to declare unopposed "We have returned once again to democracy!". Perhaps more significantly, in ‘Venezuela's political disarray’ the BBC’s Americas regional editor chose to title a subheading ‘Restoring democracy’. --from the article

You don't seem to understand the difference between advocating a viewpoint--whether "official' or not--and trying to state the facts as objectively as possible. In fact, an "official" statement, especially one being issued in such tumultuous circumstances, should be treated with particular skepticism--if for no other reason than covering the journalist's and the news organizations' asses, so they won't be caught (as they were in this situation) announcing something as fact and the truth turning out to be something else, or worse, crowing about an outcome that turns out not to be true--like that famous Chicago Daily Tribune headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman!" and the famous photo of the real winner, Harry Truman, holding that newspaper up and laughing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman

The Chicago Daily Tribune was a Republican newspaper. Its bias was revealed by its too early announcement that Dewey won, based in inadequate election returns. And it wasn't just a goof. They persisted printing papers with that headline even after they had indications that they might be wrong. They also predicted a Republican sweep of Congress (which was also wrong). They printed 150,000 copies of the paper with this erroneous news. The journalistic error derived from the political bias of the newspaper. They simply couldn't bring themselves to believe that the voters might overturn THEIR desired outcome.

I have seen this journalistic bias time and again, on Chavez events--throughout our corpo-fascist 'news' media, not just the BBC. They WANT Chavez to lose, and they print all sorts of anti-Chavez crapola, as if they were trying to MAKE him lose, and to smear over, dampen and marginalize the news when he WINS, even when he wins BIG (which is often). They, in short, HATE him, and, by implication, the great majority of Venezuelan voters--the poor, the workers, the leftists.

What we desperately need in our news/opinion media is much more SKEPTICISM. They did a very similar song and dance on the recent Honduran coup, printing lie after lie from the "officials" of the coup government, some of which have not been corrected to this day--such as the lie that President Zelaya was trying to lift his own term limit. It's STILL being repeated. And all they have to do is LOOK at the wording of his constitutional reform proposal to know that it is it WAS NEVER TRUE. Our corpo-fascist 'news' sources haven't printed that short text anywhere, and I suspect that this is not ignorance or error. They've had plenty of time to find out what it said. Yet they constantly repeat this outright lie from "official" sources, without contradiction, and sometimes even without attribution (very common initially).

And I can only conclude that they are not doing journalism any more; they are doing something else--writing fictional narratives that are aimed at creating IMPRESSIONS--the impression that Chavez is a "dictator," the impression that Mel Zelaya was trying to lift his own term limit or had violated some law--these fuzzy, smeared over, out of focus pictures that confuse and brainwash the public and that serve corpo-fascist agendas.

The BBC's triumphant little announcements about Chavez being ousted and "democracy restored" are just one example of a really serious problem in the news our people are fed, which is intended to make impressions on the subconscious mind and NOT to inspire people to think and analyze. It does not deserve the name of journalism.

[ChangoLoa]

6. I agree with that

news/opinion media in developed countries have become industries which are tied to huge corporate platforms. They are part of them, defend their interests and have their agenda. Now, to tell you the truth, I feel equally skeptical when reading a WSJ news about Venezuela or a BoRev/venezuelanalysis one. I know both give their own spin, often abusing of it, the same way El Universal does. I know it by logic, but also because I've lived personally some of the situations they have misrepresented in the past.

Now, I think we're adult enough to apply our own skepticism and I think this skepticism is best applied when positioned vis-à-vis all possible sources, favoring local ones. Ultimas Noticias (which I'd be posting probably more than El Universal if they had an english version), El Universal, El Nacional, Aporrea, etc..

The "democracy restored" BS was definitely a complete aberration. But I was chavista at that time and can tell you it wasn't "the opposition"'s claim, just part of it. The second part was strongly opposed to Carmona's decrees, while the third part was still chavista in 2002. Here, I was just picking one point... the 11th-13th april days were a huge confusion in Venezuela and many people thought he had resigned, not because of the media, but because of the declarations of the loyal top army men.

In Venezuela, we still don't have an official explanation for these tragic events. We deserve an explanation based on deep investigation and trial, even if they want to declare an amnesty after it. I don't agree with the coup being constantly used and re-used as a political tool against all the non-chavistas in the country. "Chantaje". It is simply unfair.

[Peace Patriot]

7. "Tragic events"? "Tragic" because the coup failed?

I don't think of 4/11/03 as a "tragedy." I think of it as one of the most important and positive events in Latin American history, perhaps THE most important and positive event. And I'm glad that people refuse to forget it. Every rightwinger or anti-Chavista in the country, who put themselves forward as potential leaders, needs to be tested against their possible tendency to suspend the Constitution, the courts, the National Assembly and all civil rights, because if the coup hadn't been stopped, by the people of Venezuela, the next thing would have been shooting and beheading, and imprisoning, raping and torturing of anti-coup activists, and massive repression, as has been occurring in Honduras, and also in Colombia, and as has occurred in numerous Latin American countries over the last half century. Latin America's rightwing DOES have this tendency, and people need to question what they might do.

You want it to go away, yet you want an "investigation"? Doesn't make sense.

I don't think anybody else in the world is confused about what happened. In "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," the Irish documentary makers were right there, on the spot, in Miraflores Palace, as the coup unfolded. You can watch it happen. You can see who was involved. And you can see its amazing conclusion--the restoration of democracy, of the Constitution and of the elected government.

If the Chavez government had gone forward with an investigative hunt for traitors and loyalists, then you'd be here complaining about "the Stalinist purge." They did the right thing. They questioned the military leaders, and quietly removed a few. They waited until RCTV's license to use the public airwaves was up for renewal, and didn't renew it (RCTV having been one of the major players in the coup--and one of the main reasons why there was "confusion" in the country). There were a couple of deaths, as I recall, in the tumult in the streets, but no major bloodshed--as likely would have been the case if the coup had succeeded. They moved on. They had a great deal of work to do to restore stability to the country and to implement the social and other programs they had begun--and they had continued rightwing efforts to destabilize the country, coming from different directions (the USAID-funded recall election, the oil managers' lockout and crippling oil strike, assassination plots--one of which Alvaro Uribe admitted was hatched in the Colombian military--and other such crises they had to deal with, while re-establishing the rule of law and creating policy initiatives.

But "moving on" is not the same thing as forgetting, and failing to learn the lessons of such an experience.

I watched Chavez's speech in Copenhagen yesterday, on video, and I was struck by his passionate commitment to eliminating poverty and inequality, as part of the recompense that western capitalism owes to the world for doing most of the damage to earth's atmosphere. I'm glad he was there, saying those things. They were the truth and they needed to be said. I'm glad the people of Venezuela put him there, and I'm glad the coup failed in 2002, and all the other coup attempts and US and Venezuelan rightwing plots to silence this voice of the poor majority in the world.

Your concerns seem very paltry, indeed, compared to what's going on in the world.

"I don't agree with the coup being constantly used and re-used as a political tool against all the non-chavistas in the country. 'Chantaje'. It is simply unfair."

You want to talk about what's "unfair"? Watch Chavez's speech or read it, and grasp the meaning of the poverty statistics that he cites. THAT's unfair. And the coup that tried to take this leader down and silence him was unfair. And the US dictating to poorer countries, and blockading any real action on climate change, is unfair. And a hundred billion dollars for war, and only ten billion to save the planet, is unfair--not to mention stupid and suicidal.

Try to grasp the bigger picture, ChangoLoa. It's your planet, too.

[ChangoLoa]

9. Huh?

Were you talking to me there?

I imagine you've never lived a coup in your entire life. It's always tragic. It's not only about the 15-20 dead people in front of the presidential palace... so you're misreading what I wrote, there.

But after misreading it, I think you forgot the topic when you switched to Copenhagen.

Try to stay focused, otherwise you can't grasp much.

[Downwinder]

8. I agree, In Venezuela and the U.S. we still don't have an explanation.

"We deserve an explanation based on deep investigation and trial, even if they want to declare an amnesty after it. I don't agree with the coup being constantly used and re-used as a political tool against all the non-chavistas in the country."

I'm not so sure about an amnesty, as it does not lead to a deterrent, i.e. Honduras. The coup has been used in the U.S. as a political tool against chavistas and Venezuela in general.

[ChangoLoa]

10. The amnesty is the argument of the government for not making a general investigation

How would the coup against Chavez be used as a political tool against him?

Maybe my perspective is not American enough... I talk for what I see in Venezuela.

[Downwinder]

11. Don't do business in Venezuela the government is unstable.

You have all these communist cells, they call them circles.

Get the picture?