FOX News and Venezuela:
Perhaps ironically FOX News should be applauded for giving so much coverage to Venezuela - not necessarily a "popular" story. But unfortunately the highest-rated network so thoroughly butchered the truth, that it is not surprising that many Chavez supporters are becoming conspiracy theorists vis-à-vis the US media. In segment after segment, FOX News anchors, along with its main correspondent Adam Housley, told falsehood after falsehood. The issue here has nothing to do with condemning or supporting Hugo Chavez, nor his actions regarding RCTV . This is about how FOX News spread demonstrably false information on several occasions over the course of a week. The manipulation of fact was so extreme, that one has to wonder if it was deliberate.
(...) FOX News viewers, who are not ordinarily connected to Venezuelan news, would likely believe that there is no longer any "opposition" media in that country - or at the most, perhaps one "small cable network" called Globovision. They would think this because FOX's correspondent in Caracas told them this falsehood over and over again. On May 28th, during "Your World" with host David Asman, Adam Housley said that Chavez was "taking over just about every [media outlet] in Venezuela" and added that RCTV was just "the latest." In fact, RCTV is the only media outlet that can arguably said to have been "taken over." The other stations - Televen, Venevision, and Globovision - continue to be privately owned and broadcast opposition voices (though the first two regularly balance them with government spokesmen as well). But this reality didn't stop Housley from saying on the next day's program that RCTV was "the last private and large television station here in the country that was critical of the Chavez administration." If Housely would have just turned on the other stations in the morning (or Globovision at any time of the day) he would have seen opposition members criticizing the Chavez administration. Housley went on to repeat this false characterization of the Venezuelan media landscape on Neil Cavuto's show as well as "Hannity and Colmes."
(...) In a very frustrating exchange on the June 1st broadcast of "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, Charles Barron, a councilman from New York City tried to explain some of these facts, but was rudely told by Housley that he was "full of baloney." After being introduced by Cavuto as "someone who is right there," - thus giving the correspondent undeserved credibility - Housley addressed Barron's contentions: "[Barron] says that there are three private television stations in this country that currently operate. He is absolutely wrong." Well, Barron was absolutely right, and it only takes about thirty seconds of internet research to confirm this (go to www.globovision.com, www.televen.com, and www.venevision.net). Housley then went on to say that Chavez "has shut down the media all across the country." He didn't give any specific examples, probably because to my knowledge, there aren't any.
(...) Perhaps the FOX show with the worst record of "balance" and misinformation in regards to the RCTV issue was "Hannity and Colmes." In four consecutive segments on Venezuela over the course of a week, the guest "experts" were Maria Conchita Alonso, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, and Alonso again [3]. Alonso is an actress and anti-Chavez activist who admitted on the first segment that she doesn't even follow politics. Otto Reich is a strident anti-Castro and anti-Chavez former member of the Reagan and Bush II administrations. Roger Noriega was recently Bush II's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Only the liberal Colmes offered any sort of counterpoint, but even he said right from the start that he could no longer defend Chavez for what he described as shutting down the media. In segments that were extraordinary in their removal from reality, Reich claimed that Chavez would likely order the military to kill the protestors, as Reich claimed he has done in the past, and Noriega explained to Hannity that the media is so controlled by Hugo Chavez that Venezuelans can't even see images of the protests. Alonso went on a rant about how defeated presidential candidate Manuel Rosales was in cahoots with Chavez. She also claimed that Venezuela is cursed with racial animosity that would confuse anyone who actually lives in the largely mestizo country, and went on to say that Chavez owns 65% of the media to which Hannity falsely added "Now he owns it all" [4]. Only the first of these statements has any remote basis in fact, and that is only if you accept a declaration of martial law as being equal to an order to kill protestors [5].
(...) Perhaps the most frustrating aspect to this story is realizing that FOX is the most highly rated news station, and yet its hosts and reporters seem unable to do the most basic research. Many of the hosts and correspondents of FOX repeated ad nauseum that Chavez is a "dictator" (Hannity prefers the phrase "brutal dictator") even though he was democratically elected in December by 63% of the people in an election certified by international observers, including the European Union and the Organization of American States [6]. Claims by some prominent members of the Opposition that there was indeed fraud should be respected and reported, but until the claim is backed up with demonstrable evidence, Fox News shouldn't be treating this as the accepted truth. The hosts also constantly asserted that there is hardly any media left in Venezuela that is critical of Chavez, when the reality is that one can turn on the television every day to at least three different stations on the public airwaves and find dissent. Furthermore, most of the major dailies take a strong anti-Chavez editorial line.