Quick note: As I will try to make an fair approach on how the journalist does its work, i'm totally biased against socialism altogether. So you can skip any rant I do against socialism if you want. But you can't deny the facts that will be presented.
Yesterday, I posted my opinion about how foreign media covers the news about Venezuela. I read a comment by @jdh7190:
I can sympathize with this - very difficult to find any trustworthy news on what is happening there.
What do you think of Abby Martin's journalism on Venezuela?
(Then, he postes a video link)
(has more videos while there too)
She does work for TeleSur now, who you point out in the article. I do like her, understanding that she is a bit biased toward socialism, however her work while in the country was balanced I thought.
She actually went down there which is more than what most 'journalists' have done prior publishing about this subject.
Well, I did the homework. I watched ALL of it. What I will do in this post is to point out every point that I could disagree on with links of sources that contradict claims, explanations or both.
Because I believe some of you guys will not see the video, i'll try to be as clear as I can:
Video #1: Abby Martin & Venezuela's Minister of Economic Planning:
1:38 About the "raise of social investment amid an economic recesion": Budget of Venezuela 2017 Report (Spanish) This in a report of how the Venezuela budget has a lot of misinformation. Total amount of the budget was 75% percent LOWER than the previous year. They just compliment it with additional extra funding, prone to corruption. But we'll get there later.
2:38 About Government intervention in Basic chains of production: Steel-Aluminum, PDVSA (Crude Oil), Cement, Glass, Fertilizers, and i could go on.
2:53 Income inequality: My post about wages
3:58 "We don't permit the existence of monopolies.", Well, that contradicts 2:38.
5:04 About more college graduates: Medical doctors graduated from government heavily backed Universities lack of basic medical skills, Source 2, Source 3
6:14 About School Food Programs: A supporter of Maduro addressing the current state of Food and Health Programs.
8:41 A fair report about how Venezuela Government had imposed currency control for 15 years
9:05 My post about government mafias controlling currency from Dolar Today
And I can write more about it, but, you guys can get my point. While I was watching, I had my notes on my wordpad, just pointing out that I had more stuff to share, but I want to get to the point:
There's something that really bothered me at the 11:00 mark:
When Abby asked the Minister about something, she said:
Break the reality on the ground
WTF? So the guy gives facts without real support and she asks the question assuming him would tell the truth?
At that moment, I knew she wasn't a bit biased. She is plainly biased.
But I had to check how she covered the counterpart, to see if the reporting was "fair".
First of all, check her Youtube Channel
She does not cover opposition leaders, the only video that is shown as a counterpart covers only the opposition protestors.
Video 2: Abby Martin Meets the Venezuelan Opposition
While what's has been covered was done live, most of the claims are true. Just want to point out that some of the deaths attributed to protestors, were not even from the actual unrest, it was a looting that happened far from the place of the protests, but happened in those days.
Also the official dead count rose to 127.
The journalist also points out some harassment from protestors product of a blackmail campaign. While her claims are true, some of the twitter accounts mentioned in the video have no proper identification (fairly anonymous or names that can't be verified), that could be associated with fake accounts. I pointed out this in my post about #fakenews in Venezuela:
Castellanos explains that "the generation of fake news intends to generate confusion, and uses known profiles to be reinforced. That's where the subject goes out of hand, because it's not just the propaganda laboratories, and it's worrisome. People who work in reputation, what comes to be white hat, do not do that work, simply generate content based on positive life, and expose it to download links in a search engine". On the outsourcing of advertising agencies with expertise in social networks to improve the image of a person on the Internet. "In the case of black hat hacker, it is another issue and that is what they work in Venezuela. Information, news and false accusations to modify the thinking of the masses. We speak of manipulation. In Venezuela they are leaders in that kind of content", he laments. He agrees with Díaz about the role of the Russians: "they do not play in Venezuela".
Sometimes #fakenews is spread by these bots favoring opposition parties in order to create confusion, investigate deserters or traitors, and counter any enemies of the regime.
Conclusion
I believe Abby Miller is fully biased towards socialism and follows her own propagandistic anti-US agenda by favoring government claims about situation in Venezuela. While she is an independent journalist, her work always leans left. She does a good job covering the news from the Government institutions from Venezuela, spreading Government propaganda and reinforcing it as the truth, manipulating facts. She uses true facts to grab the attention and the confidence of her audience, and then she throws bits of #fakenews to mislead people to believe everything she claims.
@jdh7190 quoted this:
She actually went down there which is more than what most 'journalists' have done prior publishing about this subject.
It's true, she went there. Because she was allowed. But Al Jazeera (left leaning media BTW) reporters were not allowed to enter months before. And that's just one of many cases.
It is our duty to spread the truth. If you agree, i invite you to resteem the post.
The Information War is real.
El gran problema con los seguidores del socialismo es que se enfocan en el locus de control externo con respecto sus culpas, hacerse un enemigo a la medida y recurrir a las falacias es lo más sencillo para evitar un problema... de igual manera cualquiera que busque datos por 1 hora se da cuenta de los grandes problemas con las respuestas del ministro y por eso entender y dar a entender lo que pasa en el país es super complicado... de todas maneras tengo algunos escritos en mi blog que puedes revisar... sobre todo la parte institucional del país que hay unos datos interesentes, saludos y te voto mañana ya que hoy no tengo poder de voto.
I think it is so awesome that you did this, thank you so much.
I have been looking for real analysis on what is happening for some time and I can tell you put a lot of effort into it.
I now see how this article comes over from the Venezuelan point of view.
Still i thin k it is a good interview as it shows us the actual mindset of the people in government.
It is good to see the other side of the argument as well.
It would be good to see more analysis of news interviews seen from both sides of the arguments.
Yeah, sure! Actually, I would want also that Venezuelan supporters of the government could do the same with right leaning/MSM media outlets. I know some steemians who could do it, actually.
And also I would want foreign media outlets to be able to cover both sides of the coin without censorship of banning of foreign reportes, as I wrote in the post.
The problem with foreign media is that they all re-chew the bloomberg / reuters reports and do very little fact checking of their own. So in that respect we still need to crowdsource or own news and hope we get the facts right. And with all the manipulated reports out there it is a real challenge to find real facts
Wow what a good post. I am Venezuelan, I have never seen any report of this journalist until now. When I saw the interview with the Minister of Economic Planning, I could not stop seeing him, because as a Venezuelan, knowing the real situation that exists in the country, it generates a lot of impotence and indignation to hear a man speak pure falasias. In the area of journalism you should always see both sides of the coin, although it is difficult to be totally impartial when you agree with certain criteria. It is therefore necessary that people see several different sources and points of view, because that is the only way to see what really sounds coherent and can be real if you do not live in the place of events. Thank you very much for your post, it really got me and you have won a new follower.
Nice post and enjoyed the interview and your notes. Some of those facts that he spewed out at the beginign were true, but they came at the cost of the economys health and now it is in disseray. Who cares how many people have pensions, if the currency becomes worthless? Who cares about the elderly and schools, if they just collapse and fall into diseray? She should have pressed him much more, instead of just letting him get his talking points across. I would agree she probably does lean in her coverage. It's tough to know if it is because she supports the socialist regime or if the regime controls here.
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