By Marc Vandepitte on September 13, 2024
Electoral parade in favor of Nicolás Maduro, July 26, 2024. Photo: REDH
Media manipulation is not only about what is said, but also about what is covered and what is not. The recent events in Venezuela are a good illustration of this.
For example; do you know the president of Peru? Or the president of Ecuador? Perhaps not. However, the chances are pretty good that you do know the name of the Venezuelan president: Nicolas Maduro. That is remarkable, because there is at least as much to say about the presidents of Peru and Ecuador as there is about the president of Venezuela.
Let’s start with Dina Boluarte. She is the unelected president of Peru and came to power through a coup against the leftist president Pedro Castillo. This happened after a period of long-term instability, during which dozens of people were killed.
She released the former fascist dictator Alberto Fujimori from prison, after he had been convicted of crimes against humanity (genocide against the indigenous population). Her right-wing coup regime is rejected by more than 90 percent of the population. All facts that the mainstream finds little or not worthwhile.
And then there is Daniel Noboa, the president of Ecuador. Under his rule, there have been almost 500 violent murders this year. The former president is exiled and is not allowed to participate in the elections.
Noboa ordered the storming of the Mexican embassy a few months ago to arrest the former vice president. The storming of an embassy is very exceptional and a particularly serious violation of international law. It should have been world news, but it was barely picked up by the mainstream media.
What is kept silent about
Media manipulation is not only about what is said but also about what is covered and what is kept silent about. If there are deradicalization camps in Xinjiang, the western province of China, this is widely reported in the press. But if camps are built in the north of India to detain and deport up to two million ‘illegal immigrants’, then no one cares, except some specialized journalists.
When protests broke out in Iran in 2022 following the suspicious death of a young woman you could read entire detailed reports about it in the mainstream media. But about Libya, which has been sinking into complete chaos after the 2011 Western military invasion and where slave camps are being set up, you hear next to nothing in the same press.
In Cuba, if once a few hundred people take to the streets it is world news. But in Argentina, when tens of thousands of people demonstrate week after week against austerity you don’t hear about it, except maybe on yet another page in a small article at the bottom.
We could go on like this for a while. If you want to approach the media critically, one of the first questions you have to ask yourself are: why is this being reported now, why is this being elevated to news and why is so much attention being paid to it? For the answer to those questions, your attention will very quickly be drawn to the geopolitical power game and you will see which side the media is on.
The ‘Brave’ Gonzalez
Back to Venezuela. Today, the news reports that opposition leader Edmundo González has fled to Spain after an arrest warrant was issued. A lot is being kept quiet about this.
For example, the far-right (another ‘detail’ which the media modestly kept quiet about) González was the only one of the nine opposition candidates who refused in advance to recognize the results of the elections, just like Trump did in the US in 2020. Nor do the media report that these elections were conducted according to a strict scenario with the intention of provoking a violent uprising and implementing a regime change in case the far-right lost.
By not recognizing the results and publishing fake results, González provoked riots the day after the elections. The media does not mention that these riots were particularly violent and caused dozens of deaths in a similar scenario to what happened there in 2014 and 2017.
The media also fail to mention that Edmundo González was involved in the formation of death squads in El Salvador that slaughtered thousands of citizens and that in 2002 he signed a decree approving the coup against the democratically elected president Hugo Chávez. Someone with such a track record that he would very likely be behind bars in a western country.
The contrast with Ecuador
For anyone who knows the region, the contrast with Ecuador is striking. Jorge Glas, vice president in a previous government, had fled to the Mexican embassy to avoid arrest. To no avail, the Ecuadorian army stormed the embassy, against all international rules, and took him into custody.
Edmundo González also sought shelter in an embassy -first the Dutch and then the Spanish- and applied for asylum in Spain. The Venezuelan government respected international law and, after negotiations with Madrid, allowed him to leave freely for Spain while guaranteeing safe passage.
This obvious contrast has apparently escaped the mainstream media. The framing is clear: Venezuela is the culprit and there is nothing wrong with storming embassies in Ecuador.
The reason for this framing is obvious. In Ecuador, a right-wing, Western-minded government is in power. In Venezuela, the opposite is the case.
The mainstream media claim to be ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’?. Well you be the judge.