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As for Venezuela and cocaine, no one believes Hugo Chavez is in the cocaine business. How unbelievably stupid. You'd be far better concentrating on your right-wing fascist hero, Ávaro Uribe. Juan Forero:; General media: manufacturing consent for war
By David Barsamian
~snip~
Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on Apr. 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona — installed by a military coup — as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution and sent his shock troops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.
Forero — who allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article — was caught again last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealed that Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.
In many ways, it has been the credibility problem posed by Forero that led to Toro’s hiring last November by the Times, and the importation of Times Mexico Bureau Chief Ginger Thompson to Venezuela last month. http://www.theglobalreport.org/issues/210/mediawatch.html~~~~~~~~~~~~snip~
~snip~
Chile's center-left president Michelle Bachelet -- who Rice name-drops every chance she gets to prove she can have socialist friends -- just last week warned Washington not to "demonize" Chávez. Yet despite this endorsement from Latin America's most lauded reformer, the Times on Saturday ran a 1300-word, front-page hatchet job by Juan Forero titled "Seeking United Latin America, Venezuela's Chávez Is a Divider; Some Neighbors Resent His Style as Meddlesome."
The article quotes seven sources, all openly anti-Chávez save for Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, like Bachelet, has repeatedly defended his Venezuelan counterpart against Washington. But Forero ignores this support, instead choosing to cherry-pick through Lula's public statements to find, and take out of context, a rare criticism. http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/2903/9 / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2002: DEMOCRACY HELD HOSTAGE, DAY TWO
New York Times readers awoke on Friday morning to read what should herald, in retrospect, Juan Forero's resignation from a career as a so-called journalist. Forero wrote:"Mr. Chavez, 47, a firebrand populist who had said he would remake Venezuela to benefit the poor, was obligated to resign in a meeting with three military officers about 3 a.m. today…" Forero was, by now, in full disinformation mode. He claimed that Chavez, during his presidency, had "seized control of the legislature," neglecting to clarify that Venezuela's electorate voted fair and square, the American way, at the ballot box for members of Congress who supported the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez.
On Friday, the military junta that had arrested and imprisoned the President at gunpoint without having legally charged him with any crime, installed national Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman, oilman, and number-one coup leader Pedro Carmona as "president."
Among Carmona's first acts: He abolished the elected national congress, disbanded the constitutionally established Supreme Court, and even changed the name of the country from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the plain old Republic of Venezuela.
Thus, in the name of stopping an "autocrat," a "dictator," an "authoritarian," a "strongman," and other epithets thrown by Forero and the Horsemen of Simulation, the coup installed a real dictator, Pedro Carmona: un-elected, mentally unstable, so mercurial as to demand the abolition of Congress, and who began a house-by-house witch hunt to round up cabinet members, congressmen and political leaders in Venezuela. http://www.theamericanvoice.com/chavez.htm ~~~~~~~~~~snip~
Three years ago, Juan Forero — a Colombian citizen who resided in the United States — wrote for something called the “Religion News Service,” churning out sophmoric ideological propaganda with titles like “Pope’s Visit Gives Cubans Hope for Freedom.” Two years ago, Forero was a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, in New Jersey. A year ago, Forero popped up as a New York Times correspondent, writing some stories from New York City — where, as the Times’ discredited ex-bureau chief in Mexico, Sam Dillon, once commented, that Times correspondents “learn to obey” their bosses — but quickly ended up on the Latin America beat, soon after narco-lobbyists had pushed the $1.3 billion Plan Colombia military intervention through Congress.
~snip~
On December 5, 2000, Forero caused his first global disgrace, when he authored a hagiography - known in the profession of journalism as a “puff piece,” the kind that is done on rock stars and Hollywood moguls - but he wrote it about the notorious drug-trafficking Colombian paramilitary phenomenon, in which Forero hailed the “savvy public relations efforts by its straight-talking leader, Carlos Castaño.”
~snip~
As part of a pact between the government and paramilitary leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group notorious for trafficking in cocaine and murdering peasants by the thousands, one of its top leaders, Salvatore Mancuso, has been providing riveting testimony to prosecutors about slayings he had ordered. There are also investigations by the attorney general’s office and the Supreme Court. Along the way, Colombians have learned how a group of 11 congressmen and regional lawmakers signed a pact with paramilitary groups to “re-found the fatherland” and “build a new Colombia.”
F.A.I.R. on Forero in February 2001:
“There were at least 27 massacres in the month of January alone, claiming the lives of as many as 200 civilians. The killings are overwhelmingly the work of right-wing paramilitaries with close ties to the Colombian military, such as the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
“Despite the dramatic nature of the attacks and the U.S.’s heavy financial involvement in the war, the New York Times did not report on a single massacre during the month of January. The findings of the human rights groups’ “Certification” report, including its recommendation that the U.S. cease military funding to Colombia, also went unmentioned.
“Far from documenting the recent wave of paramilitary terror, the Times has told precisely the opposite story. Juan Forero’s January 22 dispatch from the city of Barrancabermeja, headlined “Paramilitaries Adjust Attack Strategies,” gave a highly distorted version of events.
“Forero claims that ‘the militia members are killing fewer people than the rebels, who have responded to the threat in neighborhoods they long controlled with a furious assault on those they accuse of supporting the paramilitaries,’ and that the New Granada battalion of the Colombian military ‘is sending specially trained urban commandos into the neighborhoods to restore order.’
“The notion that the rebels in Barrancabermeja have been responsible for more killings than the paramilitaries contradicts all available evidence….
“Nationwide, Human Rights Watch reported that ‘paramilitary groups are considered responsible for at least 78 percent of the human rights violations recorded in the six months from October 1999′ (annual report, 2001).”
But that Forero got caught in his lie apparently didn’t cause any pause on the part of the Times’ International fixer Andy Rosenthal, who told Village Voice media critic Cynthia Cotts that he was shopping for a Bogotá bureau chief and that Forero was “really eager to do it.”
The Times-watcher Cotts wrote last March 7th:Now if only Juan Forero would take off the blinders. In the past year of Colombia coverage, the Times has not once published the words ‘Navy SEAL’ or ‘Green Beret.’ But according to a February 23 Miami Herald story, Colombia is swarming with U.S. mercenaries under contract with private companies to execute Plan Colombia. These companies include DynCorp, which provides plane and helicopter pilots… According to the Herald’s Juan O. Tamayo, the U.S. government has no authority to stop these mercenaries from associating with paramilitaries or entering into combat. DynCorp employees are ‘under strict orders to avoid journalists,’ but congressional sources say ‘many are hard-boiled, hard-drinking veterans of the U.S. military’ for whom the best introduction is ‘a case of beer.’ http://cbrayton.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/colombian-elit... / ~~~~~~~~~~~Concerning his dazzling Colombia contributions: ~snip~
Appropriately, Washington's mouthpiece saved the article's most extensive quote for U.S. embassy officials:
'What keeps them from going back to growing coca is the spray plane, and only the spray plane,' said an official at the American Embassy who works on the antidrug programs. 'The coca fields are enormous and there are a lot of different owners, and you just have to rub it all out. That is the only way you are going to make this work.'
Not only does the single-minded militaristic attitude exhibited in this quote typify the tone of Forero's entire article, it also illustrates the embassy's willingness to accommodate reporters from mainstream media organizations who, for the most part, refrain from seriously criticizing Washington's drug war strategies in Colombia. Meanwhile, the embassy has been less than forthcoming with journalists who write for publications more willing to honestly critique Plan Colombia.
I know several independent journalists who have been stonewalled by the U.S. embassy in Bogotá. And I have personally contacted the embassy more than a dozen times before, during, and after my last two visits to Colombia in an attempt to obtain interviews with embassy counternarcotics officials and access to information about the ongoing fumigations. It is now more than six months since my initial request and I am still waiting for an answer. One embassy official in charge of arranging interviews openly acknowledged that he knew of my work and made it clear that he did not approve of it.
Clearly, such censorship of the media undermines U.S. democracy and is reminiscent of the tactics used by authoritarian governments that only disseminate information to media outlets willing to promulgate the official propaganda. In other words, instead of providing the U.S. public with access to differing perspectives about U.S. policy that allows people to develop informed opinions about the actions of elected and appointed officials, government officials limit the flow of information in order to ensure the continued implementation of their own agenda. For such propaganda techniques to be effective, Washington needs reliable mouthpieces working for so-called respectable media organizations. Juan Forero serves this purpose regarding U.S. policy in Colombia. http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia129.htm~~~~~~~~~~~snip~
...the execrable Juan Forero, who has done much
Chavez-bashing, first for the New York Times, and then The Washington
Post. Now he's being given houseroom on NPR. He doesn't explicitly
BLAME Venezuela for the drug-trade exactly... He just regurgitates the
USA's propaganda line. http://www.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071022/070616.htmlETC. |
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