A
MILITARY COUP AS GOOD CITIZENSHIP
A look back at Reporting of the
April 2002 Coup in Venezuela
23 November 2003
When
President Hugo Chávez was forced from power
and sequestered by a faction of the Venezuelan military,
The New York Times reported the matter as a
decision by the President to resign. The "resignation"
was welcomed as a sign that democracy was moving forward
in Venezuela, and that its economy would no longer
be threatened by a crouching dictator-in-wait. The
fact that an elected official who had reportedly voluntarily
turned over power was in the armed custody of coup
leaders went unreported. In an editorial, they lauded
the immediate military appointment of an oil chief,
a political arch-rival, to replace Chávez,
saying the president had "handed power to a respected
business leader."
Three
days later, when Chávez was restored to power
amid massive popular protest, and the truth of the
matter was revealed for the world to see, the Times
ran an editorial in which it apologized for siding
with coup leaders in the ouster of a democratically-elected
official. The new editorial criticized the politically
motivated jubilation of certain governments and business
leaders, by saying:
That
reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic
manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating
a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly
he has performed, is never something to cheer.
But
The New York Times wasn't the only paper at
fault: The Chicago Tribune heralded the ouster,
wildly asserting that Chávez had a habit of
praising Osama Bin Laden. It was later discovered
that he did not, and the Tribune ran a correction.
Newsday of Long Island, New York, reported
the coup as "an affirmation of the democratic
process" alleging that Chávez had been
on a "path to subverting" his own "democratic
mandate". He may have been on such a path; he
may one day subvert the democratic process; but that
American newspapers should be so anxious to see a
military takeover of a Latin American country is nothing
short of astonishing.
Newsday
justified its claims by saying that Chávez
was "mismanaging the nation's vast oil wealth."
This view, if expanded to a general ethics of democratic
principle would mean that businessmen have an inherent
right to overthrow governments who do not serve their
interests devotedly enough. It has never been made
clear how any of these newspapers believed the government
takeover by a militant business community would further
the cause of democracy.
The
Washington Post, by contrast, condemned the coup
outright, warning against any military "interruption"
in Latin American democratic processes. This disparity
of labeling in itself leads to the question of why
the other papers were unable to see the coup as such.
Why did it appear as something less than a coup, or
something more innocent than a military takeover of
a democratic society?
The
Independent
Media Center of Philadelphia suggests the following:
The
private intelligence gathering outfit Stratfor reports
that "human intelligence" has revealed
that the U.S. State Department tried to initiate
a coup backed with "people power".
The
State Department itself issued a press release (Venezuela:
Change of Government) accusing Chávez of
"undemocratic actions" which provoked the
takeover. Alleging that Chávez aided or encouraged
supporters who fired on demonstrators (a charge disputed
by many and not substantiated by credible evidence)
by censoring the press, the State Department then
went on to say: "The results of these provocations
are: Chávez resigned the presidency."
There is no mention of the fact that Chávez
enjoyed broad public support among the poor of his
country, his constituency, or that the military and
the media joined together to place an oil mogul in
power.
Common
Dreams characterized US official reaction as follows:
The
Bush administration at first welcomed the coup,
retreating the next day after it became clear that
other countries in the Americas were not going to
recognize the illegal government.
As
a simple matter of reporting the facts, Common
Dreams goes on to report:
There
were numerous meetings between Bush administration
officials and coup leaders in the months preceding
the coup. We also know that the opposition received
money from the United States government.
That
this perspective so heavily conflicts with the official
story told by The New York Times and other
prominent news sources again leads back to the question
of why: what reporting methods were used in order
to determine that the coup was a friendly act of citizenship
by concerned Venezuelan democrats and not an old-fashioned
military coup d'état?
It
is clear, in retrospect, that the Times and
other leading news sources conducted their research
on the Venezuelan coup by reading the press release
published by the State Department only hours after
the takeover. While some sources have reported that
activity in support of the coup was underway for months
leading up to the military takeover, various newspapers
and broadcasters treated the incident as a surprise,
indicating to some that they either were not interested
in researching their stories or that they were implicitly
pleased at the turn of events.
The
story need not be a stain on the Times or on
any other major source, so long as they accept responsibility
for their journalistic misjudgments and correct their
erroneous reporting. For readers and viewers, the
issue remains: how much research is going on behind
the text or the talk or the punditry? In this wired
age, it is beginning to look as if the savvy news-seeker
will have to do just that: seek out the savvy news-givers
and choose among the many sources of information,
making comparisons and choosing carefully what to
believe as fact and what to intuit as innuendo.
Original, Graphic Content © 2003-4 Sentido