Friday, December 24, 2010

A media agenda for Venezuela? Surely Not!

Part of the daily routine at IKN Nerve Centre™ is to check on news stories doing the rounds in the region and to help that along, your humble scribe has a Google News widget that separates news stories by country. It's always Spanish language reports, but for some unknown reason this morning the whole Google feature had lapsed into English language (I have no idea why...first time ever).

Anyway, one shrugs one's shoulders and gets on with it. As usual I skimmed across the various country buttons such as Brazil...
Bogota – Brazil and the International Committee of the Red Cross agreed to provide logistical support for the planned release of five Colombian public ...
Fox News View related stories »
...which had the usual mix of bizstuff, a bit of Lula-talk, political bits and bobs etc. And so it continued with Peru....
BY KIMBER SOLANA • ksolana@thecalifornian.com • December 24, 2010 About a dozen Salinas High School students will welcome the New Year in Peru by working ...
The Salinas Californian
...and its general, newsworthy infromative mix, then to Colombia....
Bogota – Brazil and the International Committee of the Red Cross agreed to provide logistical support for the planned release of five Colombian public ...
Fox News View related stories »

...and the same kind of thing, even Paraguay...

By PEDRO SERVIN AP ASUNCION, Paraguay -- The Paraguayan government worked closely with the DEA earlier this year to expand its capacity to spy on cell phone ...
Washington Post

...and Bolivia got the same type of journalistic, no-nonsense information-first headlines that keep you up to date with things happening in the country.
(RTTNews) - Latest in a trend of growing Latin American political support for the Palestinian people, Bolivia recognized Palestine as a "free and ...
RTT News View related stories »

But then I clicked on the Venezuela button:
by Anna Mahjar-Barducci Due to the Venezuelan flood emergency that resulted in more than 130000 homeless nationwide, the Parliament gave President Hugo ...
Hudson New York View related stories »

Notice anything different about the coverage, folks? This was all a bit of an eye-opener to me, because I usually get the Google news service piping me Spanish language reports and features which never hold this amount of obvious media bias. For sure they'll cover the polemic issues out of Venezuela, but there's no obsession on Chávez, pseudo-human rights issues and general vitriol towards the country, because Venezuela has all its own business, political and social affairs worthy of report and comment. In Spanish language reports, headlines will tell you what to expect in the report, they don't immediately try to enforce an image that's been built up around a country. 

No wonder you guys get South American affairs so wrong.