When I listen to mainstream reporting on the standoff in Venezuela, I come away with the strong impression that the press has not learned anything whatsoever from their failures in the run-up to the Iraq war back in 2002-03. I know – I shouldn’t be surprised. Ironically, Trump’s targeting of the mainstream press rings a vague bell with many who recall their catastrophic support for Bush’s big middle eastern adventure. As is often the case, the Orange Disaster approaches being right on this issue from entirely the wrong direction. (The same might be said of his current policy on North Korea, though that might actually result in something positive, unlike his targeting of journalists.)
From an institutional perspective, it makes total sense that MSNBC, CNN, and the major networks would be almost totally on board the Trump train as it steams towards Caracas. These outlets are owned by corporations that are deeply vested in the imperial enterprise. Their news organizations are run by people who can’t see this crisis in any kind of equitable, non-interventionist fashion. And it’s not like they haven’t had a lot of helpful hints thrown at them, like the hiring of notorious war criminal Elliott Abrams to run the Venezuela desk, or execrable John Bolton’s crowing about how American oil companies can do good business with a Guaido-run government. Even when the quiet parts are said out loud, the media hews to the official line.
I think it’s fair to say that our two-party political culture effectively sets the parameters of debate within which our mainstream press operates. So when the leadership of the Democratic party in essence agree with the Republican president that this extreme right-wing opposition legislator who declared himself president of Venezuela should be seen as just that, no major newspaper or broadcast outlet is going to step outside of that political boundary. That is why, for example, there is no better method of determining where the center of power is in America than listening to an hour of news programming on NPR. It is why corporate-fueled media so worship bipartisanship, calls for civility, and “reaching across the aisle.” It is why television news show hosts are the primary constituencies for Howard Schultz’s toy presidential campaign.
They still got religion, my friends. They have learned nothing in the last 18 years.
luv u,
jp
Abrams was an essential player in Reagan’s war on Central American peasantry throughout the 1980s. He worked to cover up the hideous El Mozote massacre in El Salvador at the end of 1981, then went on to flak for that murderous government for the balance of his tenure. He defended the mass murderer Rios Montt in Guatemala during that period under the banner of anti-communism – a position he has proudly owned up to ever since, even though the former Guatemalan dictator was posthumously convicted of genocide in his home country (and the United States was called out by the court for supporting him). He was convicted as part of the Iran-Contra prosecution, then pardoned by pappy Bush so that he could soldier on into junior’s administration and make a mess of our policy toward Haiti, Israel Palestine, and everything else he could get his greasy hands on.