UK’s Channel 4 News and Hugo Chavez

UK’s Channel 4 television station has come under criticism over its biased and distorted news coverage of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

The report titled Hugo to go? on March 27 portrayed Chávez as a dictatorial menace and referred to his personality cult and Soviet style leadership.

The report said:

“He’s no Saddam, but what’s happening here does feel eerily familiar. A
strongman buoyed up by oil defying the United States, using oil wealth to rearm
and consolidate his own power. Setting off alarm bells in Washington where
securing energy is a key foreign policy goal. A petro-state heading for a
showdown with its northern neighbour.”

We all know that Chavez is like a thorn in Bush’s administration. He has irked the US president continuously, stating that he will not be cowed by the American threat or pressure.

This report also stated Chavez accusing the US of planning to invade his country to take control of its vast oil reserves. And he has reportedly invoked the ultimate deterrent - the bow and arrow dipped in Indian poison.

He is reported to have said:

“If we have to put a few arrows into the invading gringo, then you’ll be done in
thirty seconds.”

Veteran journalist John Pilger finds the Channel 4 news item “one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen.”

In an e-mail to the station, he said:

“This was a piece seemingly written by the US State Department, although Channel 4's Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, appeared on screen. It was one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen, qualifying as crude propaganda. I have been in Venezuela lately and almost nothing in Rugman's rant coincides with reality… Venezuela is a country in which 95 per cent of the press and TV and radio are owned by the far-right, who mount unrelenting daily attacks on the government unhindered.”

Medialens, an organization that tries to correct the distorted visions of the world media, says Channel 4 is not the only Western media organization that is guilty of wrongly lampooning Chavez.

Read here for more background.

And the situation in Malaysia…

Meanwhile in Malaysia, an overzealous and over protecting press officer of a minister has hurled profanity and used the threat of a defamation suit against an online Malaysiakini journalist for trying to get a comment from the minister.

Although he has apologized to the publication and the journalist, he nevertheless has failed to understand his role as a press officer. He is supposed to facilitate a smooth relationship between the media and the minister.

And after all the minister is a public servant whose responsibility is to the public, via the media – no matter how uncomfortable and embarrassing the questions are.

Read Jeff Ooi for more.