Manufacturing Consent in Venezuela: Media Misreporting of a Country, 1998–2014

Abstract

This article assesses Western news media coverage of Venezuela between 1998 and 2014. It found that the major newspapers in the UK and US reproduce the ideology of Western governments, ignoring strong empirical evidence challenging those positions. The press portrayed Venezuela in an overwhelmingly negative light, presenting highly contested minority opinions as facts while barely mentioning competing arguments, as Herman and Chomsky’s (2002) propaganda model would predict. After conducting interviews, it is clear that a small cadre of pre-selected journalists is immersed into a highly antagonistic newsroom culture that sees itself as the “resistance” to the Venezuelan government and its purpose to defeat it. As a result, hegemony of thought reigns and some journalists report self-censorship.

Meeting the Good Other: Proper Distance and the Representation of José Mujica in Swedish Feature Journalism

“…He now plays by the liberal democratic rules and can therefore be treated as an odd but legitimate political actor, less controversial than his leftist homologues in Cuba or Venezuela. In the end, this reinforces rather than refutes the claims made in previous research about the centrality of a liberal democratic framework for the ascription of legitimacy in mediated representations about Latin America (see Abalo 2015;Lewis 2016;MacLeod 2018).…”

“…Previous research on international journalism about Latin America has shown that liberal democratic ideals are important parameters for ascribing positive and negative characteristics to the social actors represented (Abalo 2015;Lewis 2016;MacLeod 2018). Deviance from such ideals is likely to lead to negative representations.…”

News Sources as a Propaganda Filter: The New York Times Coverage of Palestine and Kosovo Unilateral Approaches of Statehood Recognition

“…Further, some scholarly attention was paid to support and oppose elections in allied and non-allied regimes of the U.S. (MacLeod, 2018;2019;Chomsky, 1988, 2002). Most importantly, assessing the western media performance, in general, and the U.S. mainstream media specifically, regarding U.S. foreign policies of diplomacy (i.e., statehood recognition) has almost not been devoted.…”