Our South African friend Dominic has sent me links to two important articles about the MSM’s atrociously poor– both negligent and biased– handling of some of the important stories out of Latin America.
The first was this May 1 piece by Mark Weisbrot, about the recent re-election of Ecuador’s left-leaning President Rafael Correa.
The second is this piece by Dan Beeton about the failure of the MSM to give anything like adequate coverage to the threats that Bolivia’s indigenous-culture Pres. Evo Morales faces from noticeably racist (settlerist) rightwingers in some parts of the country.
I wish I had time to write more. But thanks, Dominic, for sending me these pieces.
5 thoughts on “US MSM and Latin America”
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Thanks Helena!
These two articles popped up soon after our election and they make me think that maybe the MSM is not mainstream any more.
In so many countries, including South Africa, “the vast majority of the mass media, to varying degrees, shares the opposition’s agenda and in many cases appears willing to present an overly pessimistic or even catastrophic scenario in order to help advance the cause.”
Yet the people (the “Nobodies”) vote against what the self-styled MSM of the ricos advises them to vote for.
It must mean that there is another medium, or plural media, that are reaching the people. In SA it was multi-media but most crucially it was the people’s own mass organisation, the ANC, which is in itself a medium of mass communication.
In the USA where the alleged MSM is shamelessly selective, people are not buying it, and newspapers are folding. I personally think that people would still support hard-copy newspapers, if only they were honest.
It’s all a bit like an “ox-bow lake”. What used to be the main stream is no longer a stream. It’s now a lake. The stream has moved away to the South-East.
I’m intrigued by this NACLA article.
“A clue is to be found in the New Democrat rhetoric of Leopoldo López… López said he was sick of the old political alignments. “Chávez, king of the poor, versus the rich opposition: This is an old story to me,” he said. Law and order, infrastructure development, and respect for human rights—these are the main planks of the new opposition (which he prefers to call an “alternative”). Most tellingly, he added that this alternative must be “social”; that is, it must address the country’s rampant poverty and inequality.”
It could be that the Venezuelan opposition is evolving to directly address the people’s concerns with inequality and economic opportunity. I am hopeful. The opposition could grow into a means of constructing social justice alternative to Chavez’s combative vision of social change.
People have noted that the Latin left has a wide diversity. Bachelet, Lula da Silva, Kirschner, Correa, Ortega, and Chavez take very different approaches to achieving a left leaning agenda. The Venezuelan opposition can fit into that niche, providing a counter voice to Chavez’s personality cult organization and militant trappings like red uniforms and armed groups.
Similarly, Morales is distinct from Chavez. He has the clear goal of empowering the Native American majority. I hope perhaps more than reasonably that Obama can pick up on this unique goal of Morales, and ally the U.S. with that goal. That way Morales can pursue his agenda for the Aymara and Quecchua without having to ally himself with the Chavez machine.
Inkan, in SA we have a lot of writers who do the kind of right-wing spin that you have just done here. They have the freedom to do it and they even get well paid for it. My point is that “The Nobodies” (see below) are not listening to all that. They are hearing a different drummer. There is a new Main Stream, and you are not on it, yet.
Chavez gave Obama a book by the guy who wrote “The Nobodies”, Eduardo Galeano. Here is that poem:
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing.
The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them
Domza, I am not spinning, and I am not a right winger. The hard right opposition represented by the attitude expressed in that poem is not the answer to Chavez; the NACLA article raises the possibilty of the Chavez opposition acknowledging that. If the Nobodies are not listening, then keep working on the drumbeat. I hope to hear the drumbeat contribute positively to the mainstream, rather than simply drinking the current stream’s koolaid.
Hi Inkan,
Your new response is not clear to me. I am saying that “MSM” is a dead concept and a misnomer, if applied in the received manner as meaning private-enterprise newspapers, TV and radio. The latter are peeling off from the body politic like a dry scab. They may once have been crucial levers of political power, but they no are no longer. they have been replaced by other media, and by organisation.
What is clear is that in your earlier post you are ranking the left governments in order of whiteness from Bachelet to Kirchner and then onwards and then trying to set them at loggerheads. Especially you would wish to drive a wedge between Chavez and Morales. You are quite specific about that. You make a virtue of “opposition”. Correa pointed out recently that the bourgeois-democratic electoral form of politics is designed to rupture national unity. All along the line you are looking for division, between countries and within countries.
Against gigantic Imperialism what we must deploy is unity. (In Africa, the great advocate of anti-Imperialist unity was Kwame Nkrumah.) “Right-wing” may be an odious tag. Fair enough. We don’t have to use it if you don’t like it. The point is that you have a very clear agenda and that agenda of yours is contradicting the agenda of unity and popular agency.
Your vision, quite wrong I may say, of Morales as a kind of tribalist South American IFP, is quite typical compared to the “MSM” of South Africa, always wanting to escape from class back to race, as is the constant promotion of “opposition” as a virtue in itself.