The Guardian 18 June, 2008
Culture and Life
by Rob Gowland
Trust the capitalist media?
Of course!
There’s an old saying, "Don’t believe everything you read in the papers", which these days should be amended to include "or hear on the radio or see on TV". It is precisely because the capitalist-owned news media are so biased and untrustworthy that the CPA is obliged to commit such a large chunk of its resources to producing its own newspaper, to correct at least some of their most glaring omissions and distortions.
And never were these flaws more evident than in the coverage in early June of Hugo Chávez’ televised call to the guerrilla movement Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end their armed struggle. Chávez, President of Venezuela and leader of its Bolivarian Revolution, was speaking on his regular weekly television program.
Addressing some of his remarks directly to FARC’s new leader Alfonso Cano (FARC’s long-time leader Manuel Maralanda died of a heart attack in March), the Venezuelan President urged FARC to change its tactics. "At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place", he said.
Chávez also called on FARC to release all of its hostages, which include US military contractors, Colombian government soldiers and police, and various political figures. "It would be a great humanitarian gesture", he observed.
President Chávez is all too aware that the US and its allies are desperate to find a pretext for diplomatic, economic and even military intervention against Venezuela (and other Latin American countries following a progressive path, such as Ecuador). The leading capitalist states — the US, Britain, the EU — want to mete out the same treatment to them as has been meted out to Cuba, Zimbabwe, Serbia and Iraq.
In his televised address, Chávez pointed out that continuing FARC’s present tactics played into the hands of the US. For "the US" he used the term by which that country is known throughout North and South America, indeed throughout the world: the Empire.
In the television news coverage of that segment of his talk that I saw, the American TV reporter affected to be puzzled over this reference, laboriously suggesting that it "might" mean the USA. If his puzzlement was genuine, then he would surely be the only newsman in the whole of the Western Hemisphere who was unaware of what is meant these days by "The Empire".
But if the TV newsman was disingenuous, the Wall Street Journal was actively engaged in the production of disinformation. In an article by Jo?e de Córdoba, reprinted in The Australian on June 10, the fiercely right-wing newspaper cunningly interpolated anti-FARC editorial comment into factual reports of what Chávez said. Without a very careful reading of the text, the Wall Street Journal’s propaganda would appear to be part of the "factual" background information.
These tactics are subtle and effective, and deserve close scrutiny. For example, the uncontroversial sentence "He [Chávez] urged the guerrillas … to free the estimated 700 hostages they hold" was amended to include (at the point indicated by "…") the deliberate slur "who raise funds mainly through drug trafficking and kidnapping for ransom".
FARC is proscribed by the US as a "terrorist" organisation. Just as the Nazis did, the US regards all guerrilla forces as "terrorists", unless they are anti-communist guerrillas, of course. Aiding or supporting a proscribed organisation is sufficient justification for the US to unleash the full force of its "war on terror" against a country, group or individual.
Predictably, the Wall Street Journal article hammers home the line that "FARC has relied on Mr Chávez’ political and economic support in its war [against the Colombian government]", elsewhere referring to "the financial and military support he [Chávez] appears to have been giving the rebels". (That use of "appears" is significant: it usually means "we want to smear someone but we have no credible evidence so need an ‘out’ for ourselves".)
Lack of evidence does not daunt the Journal’s willingness to smear Venezuela’s government, however. Contradicting its own stance, the paper conjectures that President Chávez’ message to FARC "may have been prompted by the sheer volume of evidence implicating him and some of his closest officials in aiding a group that is seen as a terrorist organisation by the US and the EU".
If there really was a significant "volume" of evidence, one can be sure the Wall Street Journal would not hesitate to declare the case against Chávez as "proven" and to condemn his government in far more explicit terms than the ones used in the quoted article.
Perhaps the most objectionable part of the article, however, is that dealing with the murder of FARC’s deputy leader, Raúl Reyes, who was killed on March 1 by a treacherous US bombing raid while in Ecuador to negotiate the release of hostages. In a co-ordinated move, the Colombian Army was sent across the border into Ecuador to finish off any survivors of the bombing raid.
The Wall Street Journal’s response is to ignore Reyes’ reason for being in Ecuador and to instead assert, incredibly, that "FARC has not seemed keen to negotiate", advancing as evidence to support this claim a statement on a "pro-FARC website" by Ivan Marquez, "a FARC leader and liaison with Mr Chávez", saying that the guerrillas’ "strategic objective is the taking of power for the people". Gosh!
According to Colombian police (a US proxy force), the devastated camp of the Reyes negotiation team yielded allegedly still functioning computers that — surprise, surprise, in the highly suspect words of the WSJ — "appeared to implicate Mr Chávez in efforts to provide [FARC with] money, arms and political support".
Sure, they did. Like I said, you cannot believe anything you read in the bourgeois media. That’s for sure.