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If at first you don't succeed... Venezuelan army officers tell the Christian Science Monitor they're planning another coup attempt. Other signs: Ten masked men criticized President Chavez on TV last week, protests are mounting and, oh, those 50 tanks you see over there? Don't be alarmed. They're just "rehearsing" for the July 5 Independence Day parade, which also happens to be the day Chavez may try to clean house during an annual round of military promotions. Ruh-roh. The good news: On June 10, workers at the country's largest newspaper released a statement denouncing last April's media manipulation by wealthy owners and promised to fight if it happened again. And everyone's favorite meddling Baptist has announced he's heading to the area. (More inside)
posted by mediareport on Jun 20, 2002 - 22 comments

Online journalism, Venezuela style: "Venezuela's Electronic News," an independent source of news and opinion since 1996, has lots of details about the amazing events of last week. And this online newspaper from the island of Trinidad/Tobago, only a few miles from the Venezuelan coast, helped spread initial reports that contradicted the standard line. Meanwhile, over at good ol' Narco News, journalist Al Giordano has posted a must-read analysis of the online "counter-coup" against the spin from mainstream news outlets. Were the Venezuelan TV stations that fanned the coup's flames simply "upset with Chavez...over having to pay taxes like any other business for the first time in their history," as Giordano claims? Was this really "online journalism's finest hour," driven by "a decentralized slingshot army - you know who you are - that now has the microphone and will never give it up to the commercially-driven usurpers of democracy again?"
posted by mediareport on Apr 16, 2002 - 1 comment

Was the Venezuela coup another Chile 1973? Two months ago, Narco News called attention to the striking similarities between the situation in Venezuela and CIA plots against leftist Chilean president Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. The CIA's own version of what happened in Chile discusses its "sustained propaganda efforts, including financial support for major news media, against Allende and other Marxists." Hmm. Chavez shut down five private TV stations after they repeatedly aired what he called misleading footage of the protest deaths last week, after months of relentless attacks against his government. Sure makes you wonder.

On another note, did eyewitness accounts widely disseminated over the Web help doom the White House spin that "government supporters, on orders from the Chavez government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors"? If the Web didn't exist, would the final word have come from articles like this now out-of-date, pro-business analysis in yesterday's Washington Post?
posted by mediareport on Apr 14, 2002 - 47 comments