When news of Hugo Chávez’s death broke yesterday, I wondered whether the Paper of Record would ignore its own disgusting record on Venezuela in its coverage. Alas, I was not disappointed.
In April 2002, when coup plotters briefly overthrew the democratically-elected president and kidnapped him to a remote island in the Caribbean – with the consent and backing of the White House – the Times jumped aboard the coup wagon. Not only was there an official editorial endorsing the coup, there was even a breathless profile of Pedro Carmona, a “Man in the News” in Times parlance, the coup leader/figurehead/who knows, full of details the Times could only have gotten in advance from one source: their chums in Langley, with whom they have a well-established and very cozy relationship.
Today the Times had nothing to say about its own role in the 2002 coup.
Um..Mr. Public Editor?
1 Comment.
The current public editor is a woman. She, like her predecessors, consistently fails to actually press the issues for the readership. You’d have better luck doing division by zero than waiting for the public editor to chew out the Times.