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Channel 4 Paints President
Chavez As Dictator
Hugo to go?
Broadcast 03/27/06 Channel 4 UK
By: Jonathan Rugman
A special report on Venezuela's extraordinary President Chavez -
friend of the poor, enemy of the gringo. But is he coming off
the rails?
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John Pilger On Channel 4
Chavez Report
On March 27,
Channel 4 News broadcast a relatively long piece on Hugo Chavez,
president of Venezuela. On Channel 4's website you get a flavour:
“He is in danger of joining a rogue’s gallery of dictators and
despots — Washington’s latest Latin nightmare.”
This was a
piece seemingly written by the US State Department, although
Channel 4's Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, appeared
on screen. It was one of the worst, most distorted pieces of
journalism I have ever seen, qualifying as crude propaganda. I
have been in Venezuela lately and almost nothing in Rugman’s
rant coincides with reality. Factories are like “Soviet
collectives”; a dictatorship is on the rise; Chavez is like
Hitler (Rumsfeld); and the media is under government attack. The
inversion of the truth throughout this travesty is demonstrated
in the “coverage” of a cowed media. Venezuela is a country in
which 95 per cent of the press and TV and radio are owned by the
far-right. who mount unrelenting daily attacks on the government
unhindered. The Latin American Murdoch, Cisneros, unfettered,
controls much of it. Indeed, it is probably the most
concentrated, reactionary media on earth — but that was not
worthy of a single word from Rugman.
The
dishonesty of interviewing Maria Corina Machado and calling her
a “human rights activist” was breathtaking. She is a leader of
Sumate (’Join up’), an extreme right organisati on that was
deeply involved in the 2002 coup. She met Bush in the White
House shortly before the coup. There was no mention of this. Evo
Morales, the president of Bolivia, is dismissed as a Chavez
protege”, a puppet, a ludicrous description of a man who has
been in polityics longer than Chavez and has just won a
landslide election. No mention of this.
Chavez
himself is portrayed by Rugman as a comical dictator, with his
folksy Latin way (one reason ordinary people love him) taken out
of any context. In fact, this highly intelligent, accessible man
has overseen victory in nine democratic elections in less than
eight years — a world record. In crude Soviet-flick style, he is
shown with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafy when these
brief encounters only had to do with Opec and oil. (He met
Saddam literally in a day-long stopover).
Chavez is
said to have “torn up contracts” with foreign oil companies. The
con tracts were barely legal, based on loopholes which Chavez’s
predecessaor Rafael Caldera exploited to give away much of
Venezuela’s oil, in effect; billions of dollars went into the
pockets of Venezuela’s wealthy minority. No mention of this.
Utter
bullshit about Venezuela helping Iran develop a nuclear
capability is sourced to “press reports” (discredited in the
United States) peddled by axe-grinding outsiders, in league with
Washington, along with other half-baked hearsay. There was
little, apart from tokens, about the way the Chavez government
has changed millions of people’s lives for the better. Rugman
whined that he was “held for 30 hours” by police in Caracas. Oh,
how dramatic for him. This is a country threatened day and night
by the United States; there was nothing from our Channel 4 hero
about “Operation Bilbao”, to which serious US analysts like
William Arkin have given credibility and which is about
overthrowing the elected government of Ve nezuela. In his brief
captivity, Rugman would have learned that this is a country,
although under constant military threat, and threats from
within, has not a single political prisoner.
While Chavez
was offered up as a clown, Condaleeza Rice was given true
gravitas. I could go on, but that’s enough. This was a disgrace
from beginning to end. Worse, it joined the kind of hysteria in
the US that is following the Bush administration’s agenda of
“positioning” Venezuela as a “rogue state” and a threat to US
interests: in other words, softening it up for attack. If and
when it comes, the Rugmans will share some of the
responsibility.
John Pilger
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