Pathetic Spin from the New York Times

July 30, 2024 by Dan Mitchell

What’s the most unfortunate country in the world?

• North Korea?
• Zimbabwe?
• Cuba?

Those are three good answers, but another option is Venezuela.

Just a few decades ago, it was the richest nation in Latin America and life seemed very nice.

 

But then the country was taken over by socialists and living standards have since plummeted.

The situation is such a disaster that some crazy leftists – such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain – are denying that Venezuela is an example of their ideology. Instead, those clowns even claimed that Venezuela was an example of capitalism!

That’s the kind of crank argument one might expect from an extremist group of leftist ideologues.

It’s very disturbing, though, to see identical spin from the New York Times.

Yet that’s exactly what you can find in a report filed by Anatoly Kurmanaev, Frances Robles, and Julie Turkewitz

Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, was declared the winner of the country’s tumultuous presidential election early Monday… The vote was riddled with irregularities, and citizens were angrily protesting the government’s actions… In the past, security forces aligned with Mr. Maduro have crushed protests with violence. …If the election decision holds and Mr. Maduro remains in power, he will carry Chavismo, the country’s socialist-inspired movement, into its third decade in Venezuela. Founded by former President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s mentor, the movement initially promised to lift millions out of poverty. For a time it did. But in recent years, the socialist model has given way to brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small state-connected minority controlling much of the nation’s wealth.

What a pathetic example of media bias.

All three reporters deserve some sort of prize for lying to readers, and every editor who saw that story before it went to print also deserve endless scorn.

Here are a few facts:

• Venezuela is the the lowest-ranked country according to Economic Freedom of the World. That makes it more anti-capitalist than any other country on the planet.
• Writing “state-connected” and “capitalism” in the same sentence should have been a giveaway to anyone with an IQ of room temperature or above.
• Notice that the reporters wrote “economists say” without actually citing a single economist. Even Joe Stiglitz had enough sense not to get quoted.

I’ll close by offering some advice to biased journalists. If you want to defend socialism while being at least vaguely honest, mention if your stories that there are different strains of leftism.