Distorting 'Democracy' in Venezuela Coverage

http://fair.org/home/distorting-democracy-in-venezuela-coverage/
Date Written:  2019-05-10
Publisher:  Fair
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23681

Round up of some of the many media outlets that call Guaidó's coup attempt in Venezuela a democratic movement and refer to democratically elected president Maduro as a dictator.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Writing of the failed US-sponsored coup attempt in Venezuela on April 30, 2019, Uri Friedman of The Atlantic referred to the Venezuelan branch of the coup as Juan "Guaidó’s pro-democracy movement." The logical contradiction could scarcely be more pronounced: A wave of Friedman's wand transforms a political force seeking the military overthrow of Venezuela’s elected government into a "pro-democracy movement...."

For the Journal, "Venezuela's democratic leaders" are those who sat out the country's election, claimed it was unfair and then declined to file an appeal with the country's National Electoral Council (CNE). One is hard-pressed to imagine a more soundly democratic practice than Guaidó not running for president and then declaring himself president even as 80 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of him at the time....

Lost on Kristof was that that Canada’s "moral leader[ship]" and status as a member of whatever "the free world" is was exposed as smoke and mirrors not even a month earlier, when Canadian police armed with military-level assault gear invaded Unist’ot’en, an indigenous territory whose people never ceded control of their land to Canada in any treaty, and arrested 14 people who had set up a checkpoint to defend the land from construction of a natural gas pipeline.