Thread by @AlanRMacLeod

(Thread) If you're asking yourself "why is coverage of Venezuela so poor?" - I did a PhD and wrote a book on the topic.

What most people don't realise is this isn't a mistake. Journalists actively see themselves as the opposition to the government.

Journalists think of themselves as the ideological shock troops against the chavistas and see it as their number 1 goal to overthrow the government. They're every bit as important as the military or intelligence community in this regard.

Journalists who don't go along with the regime change narrative admit they have to self-censor to even get along, otherwise their life would be hell.

Regime change-supporting sources are called upon all the time, but academics critical of the coverage are blacklisted across the entire media, strongly suggesting collusion between the press to maintain a unified image of the situation.

The whole point of the coverage is not to provide people with unbiased, neutral news, but to be the first step in regime change. Big media are key assets for Western governments in pushing for war.

Here's a link to the book.
amazon.com/Bad-News-Venez…

If we remove the by-lines, it is literally impossible to distinguish between @nytimes and @washingtonpost op-eds and editorials and speeches made by the most radical of opposition leaders. They share the same framing, talking points, turns of phrase and rhetorical flourishes.

Check out my other work on the media coverage of Venezuela:

journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/a…

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

fair.org/author/alan-ma…

The intentional misreporting of Venezuela has another purpose: to create a weapon to attack leftist movements at home with false comparisons to false catastophic dictatorships.

there's so much of this stuff