Carroll in Wonderland: How the Guardian Misrepresents Venezuela

[Pablo N]

Available here: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Carroll-in-wonderland-how-the

[Cafecito]

What is the Guardian Up to?.

After a number of years reading Rory Carroll’s reports from Latin America, his point of view seems pretty clear. He has every right to his ideas, and to write what he thinks. The major problem is that he writes as the Guardian’s sole Latin American correspondent.

There’s little enough information in the major media about Latin America and what there is often heavily slanted against governments such as those of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. Given its history and general slightly left of centre viewpoint, The Guardian should be one of the more credible sources, one which takes a more socially aware point of view. But it doesn’t. It employs Rory Caroll and supports his analysis. Why?

If it’s true, as Siobhain Butterworth says, that the Guardian has no obligation to be objective, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the newspaper has made a conscious decision to take sides  against Hugo Chávez.

I don’t consider myself to be a Chavista, but I’m certain that despite the problems that exist in his government and a personal style often grates, that he has done what no other leader in Venezuela has done: given the poor hope in the future and the possibility of improving their lot. The same thing goes for the Morales government in Bolivia and for Correa in Ecuador. This is not ‘The Revolution’, but I’ll take it. 
 
And while Venezuela is a target, the Guardian produced, with Carroll’s participation, an unacknowledged advertising supplement, paid for by Colombian State institutions, which lauded Uribe and a ‘Colombia open for Business’. In this particular case the paper refused to accept responsibility for misleading its public with a ‘report’ that was clearly nothing of the kind. A Guardian staffer even defended Carroll’s interview with Uribe, on the basis that he had asked him some hard questions. If I remember correctly, the answers to those questions came in the last two paragraphs of a fairly extensive and very pro Uribe interview. 

At times I wonder if the Guardian’s editorial department has a clear idea of what is going on here in Latin America, or is even interested in forming one, or if Carroll and his leanings are an indication of a conscious political decision. I’d like to think it the former but fear that rather than a lack of knowledge what we are seeing is political manipulation adapted to the present government’s pro US political stance, or pandering to financial interests, or both.   

In the end it matters little what Rory Carroll is or is not. It’s The Guardian that’s the problem.