by the way what is it that. is this is a sticker from the water bottle found in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers they're the bad ones they're the litter bugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. special projects funded. on the. mountains of waste only grow.

hello and welcome to cross talk all things considered i'm peter lavelle whether you're for or against the venezuelan government for or against socialism it is obvious the mainstream media are committing a lot of journalistic malpractise once again mainstream media as called the policy preferences of those in power if it comes to still another military intervention will the media be held responsible. cross talking media malpractise i'm joined by my guest alan macleod in edinburgh he is an academic and writer for fairness and accuracy in reporting as well as author of the new book bad news from venezuela twenty. years of fake news and misreporting

and in caracas we cross to point out he is a visiting professor at science pope but he and former vice minister of foreign affairs under president hugo chavez are gentlemen rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciated all right let me go to alan in edinburgh you're by far probably the best expert on this you've written a book about it and i have no question that you probably could write at least a few more chapters to your book on western media coverage of venezuela i think that that's not an understatement go ahead in edinburgh. here for sure this is just the latest chapter in the media hysteria over venezuela this latest bridge a chapter across the western media we saw reports that make two or was a dictator he was starving his own citizens destroying eight and yet this narrative was very clearly immediately on social media and by the international press and yet

it took weeks for the new york times to to change their story. it shouldn't have taken a toll any time i told frankly because the official narrative was always so ridiculous i mean the official narrative was that the bolivarian national guard hundreds of meters away had inflamed these trucks by shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at them when in fact there were demonstrators right beside throwing flaming fire bombs all times and that seems much more likely to be the case of why these trucks went on it ok now i let me let me ask you real quick before we go to caracas here i mean is it the correction the new york times made and the semi correction the c.n.n. attempted is it was because alternative media are r t america and gray zone the project of blumenthal they shamed the media outlets into making some kind of admission that a mistake had been made even though it took two weeks here let me let me let me go

to caracas right now i mean i suppose you being once part of the government you're used to this kind of demonization from western media but i mean it's this demonization now is on steroids because it is informing or trying to influence western audiences that there may be a military operation against your country go ahead in caracas yeah absolutely that's the frightening part of it because the the western media coverage of venezuela for the last two decades in extremely biased but in the case in the present case. what what he's obviously is that the two sides the oversimplify the reality this evening for instance mr white and those supporters i was after your defenders of democracy and the reality is that they don't know anything about you know who the people behind waybill are or who the true political believes of the last people are but in a way those are the allies of the usa or the allies of the western countries sold

western media tend again to justify everything they do weight gains the mill. government on the other hand those same western media. in a very proactive way try to depict this again as you say there's a monster as a regime that must be wiped out of the country and in a sense at the end of the day they justify any type of radical approach to venezuela including the possibility of a military intervention so this is this is extremely serious and extremely dangerous for the country and the terrorists any any rational approach of the country any and any moderate vision that will in a way advocate for a peaceful resolution of the conflict the western media tend to make the crisis more dramatic and not help solving it you know in the middle back there i mean western media only is actually following the cue coming from the trumpet ministration unfortunately they just embellish it there is no toothpaste there are

no two toothbrushes i mean i see this nonsense on c.n.n. i mean one of the things that you know the the media malpractise that i see is that the people the poor starving people of venezuela and that monster wrote lead in aid but they never talk about the sanctioning of the country what kind of sanctions are in place how they're damaging the economy how they're damaging the average person and then they talk about legality you how this random why don't come out of virtual obscurity or made the acting president or you know as lindsey graham gets all upset you know that he is the real president. chastising c.n.n. i mean that they can't even really convey a coherent media narrative about what's going on in venezuela go ahead down.

here absolutely venezuela has grown zero for news frankly apparently one of the ends and c.n.n. does stand for new. yes but you wouldn't you wouldn't know that if you watched it the u.n. sanctions have had a serious effect on the economy the united nations formally condemned the united states sanctions on a wheel they called on all member states to break them and even discuss the reparations that the united states should pay to venezuela one american special un rapporteur described the sanctions as a kin to a medieval siege and even declare trumped guilty of possible crimes against humanity now the fact that the resistance media presents itself as this fact checking base that will stand up to trump is frankly ludicrous were when you look at foreign policy because not only are they not nor where they're not even know where they're standing shoulder to shoulder trying to produce a regime change in venezuela absolutely let's go back to our kids here i'm really glad that alan brought up the un's position here because again western audiences

are not told that the saying sions that the united states has put are imposed upon venezuela are illegal under international law they have never explained how international law plays into this be the way they talk about restoring democracy but at the same time the u.s. promotes the ripping up the venezuelan constitution where you don't have the rule of law the rule of law will be determined by who's sitting in elliott abrams office at the time apparently go ahead goes yeah absolutely there mainstream media never question the legality or even the rationality of this sanctioning approach and the perceived policy which is again which finds only supports in the united states and the hmong but most conservative repair center there was of the polity the united states that approaching you know the interventionist. coliseum of the united states

these every the rest of the world and in this case in. in latin america and that's imposing sanctions over a country is going to do any better you know or of the situation to evolve in any positive way again the legality of it or even the rationality of it is never a question in the mainstream media and on the other hand again this this depiction of the country suffering from only one problem of the only problem is the regime as they call it or the government or or the president the briton the person who is the head of the government and there needs to be a very simplistic approach sanctions treasure to make these evil people comply to western values or even to you know you are now here and narrative that had these appeared or almost these appear from from from from from the media since the scene since the end of called war which is the free world there are not even venezuelans

in the opposition and people in the united states are speaking about both worlds the west are with us in this conception again of struggle between you know the good and the bad the values of the west and all the tyranny or terrorism again this is this this is extremely dangerous in the sense that it affects the reality as you say of venezuelan people here in the country in get i guess we may have our own problems internally but on top of those you know these sanctions and these approach from the use of ministration only makes things almost impossible to solve the a worse and almost impossible to solve in in if you will in the normal venezuelan dynamic where actors could eventually reach agreements six solutions we are today facing this this chaotic situation that is radicalized by the by the sanction policy imposed by the united states you know how i mean you know it's

interesting how the new york times covers this because. when the material was inaugurated. they wrote a story about it and they said who was what countries what was the order there at the ceremony and then after of why dode this random guy picked plucked out of obscurity. when they reported on his inauguration they actually rewrote history saying material he himself swore himself in which is factually not true whatsoever so what they want to do is they wanted to create this this equivalence both of them swore themselves in which is not factually correct so what they were they're rewriting history is there as they're supporting this upstart that is taking the title is all you know it was what i could tell he she was basically being ignored because he's irrelevant in his own country he only has rebel and when he goes to

a rock concert in colombia go ahead. yeah i mean the media are presenting why and why do as i do as equal as somebody progressive centrist who can really unite polarized nation but the fact remains is that even in january twenty ninth seen more than eighty percent of the country didn't even know who quieter was his entire claim bases around article two hundred thirty three of the constitution which says if the president is either mentally or physically incapacitated then they will need to call new elections but the problem is that material clearly hasn't left his position he's right there wanting to serve and even then when you read the article it says that the power will then be transferred to the vice president anyway so i don't really doesn't really have much of a constitution inside of venezuela but he certainly does have one among the international media he certainly has the recognition of washington and its

allies in the region and it's really quite interesting when you look at the fifty countries or so this support. if you look at the nature of democracy in latin america of some of these governments that are following the united states i mean their democratic credentials are pretty weak as well and a lot of those governments are quite right wing we could look at like i think was in honduras of these stop counting and they said we don't like the direction it's going into so you know we're not going to we're just going to ignore it so democracy is not the point here i'm going to jump in here gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after a short break we'll continue our discussion on media malpractise stay with us to. you know world as big part of. things and yours it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that made history media refuses to tell more than

ever. need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. join me every thursday simon show and i'll be speaking to get us from the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. seemed wrong why don't we all just don't call. me. yet to stamp out disdain comes to the ticket and in games from an equals betrayal.

when so many find themselves worlds apart when she's to look for common ground. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter we're discussing media malpractise. ok let's go back to tim you're in because. probably will probably probably surprise you by saying this but i'm actually quite conservative person culturally conservative and i must tell you i'm not a very big fan of socialism but you know what what business is of venezuela's political and economic system of mine why should i have an input other than maybe making my own personal contribution my point is here this is an issue that needs to be dealt with among the people of venezuela and not outsiders judging or.

make calling winners in your country here because that's exactly what's happening i mean donald trump is making one of the cornerstones of his reelection campaign is that america isn't socialist at all never will be socialist and you are paying the price for that ok and so i mean irrespective of the political or economic system you have it is something that has to be done within the borders of your country and not to have the kind of the kind of threatening attitudes and policies of the of the trumpet ministrations and its allies particularly when you have an individual as elliott abrams at the spearheading this with me and again i'll ask alan about this there's very little media comment about that gentleman's background go ahead in caracas. yeah absolutely. you know one of the recurrent arguments or. lines that that has been developing. is about venezuela

being a socialist country and again this distinction between a country with a socialist government which you can find for instance in spain. you have a prime minister in spain that. labels himself a socialist that doesn't mean that the economic and political system of spain is socialism again in the case of venezuela we're in a different reality of course but the reality is that over over the last two decades most of the g.d.p. in venezuela is produced by the private sector most of the businesses are private beyond venezuela is a country where you know private property has always existed and has existed during the last twenty years again we're not speaking about a socialist system there and again the depiction of venezuela being a socialist country where the inside man is a democratic opposition that is that is fighting against these you know

totalitarian oratory authoritarian system is is of course a blatant lie not only but as the day is much closer it's it has its problems of course as any developing nation it has its challenges both economically or politically but as as many latin american countries our political systems tend to be closer to the western countries or western media call liberal democracy with with rather than of opinions competition among them and as you rightly. underscore words previously latin america is of course a continent where you can find countries they on daughters where there are serious democratic challengers or even the rule where you have a president that has not been elected because the previous one had to resign over corruption again you have complicated situations in many countries and venezuela you know is part of the of the reality and those challenges that that are common to

latin america and to developing nations in general so this this focus on. you know singling out venezuela as a problem for the world these of course. with the intention of justifying the policies that we have previously in this in this show you know and you know you john bolton i guess in a moment of clairvoyant thought i think he was on. and this n.b.c. i mean he essentially really said well we covered paraphrasing it we covered venezuela's oil it would be nice if american companies could help with what was it been his way loads petroleum capacities you know i think that's his code you know we want it we would and we had we didn't we might even get it ok because i think it's similar was saying earlier if you look at the behavior of the political opposition the right wingers in bed is way less well they don't seem very happy with the rules of democracy because they can't win and they think if you can't win

through elections then you don't participate in the elections and then if you don't participate in the elections you say the elections are unfair i mean that's like dealing with a three year old child go ahead. yeah absolutely i mean the western media present the united states as this benevolent force interested only in humanitarianism and democracy but there's a lot of problems with this narrative i mean first of all the u.s. and the red cross are refused to back the united states is calling it politically motivated so right off the. bat it's already a big red flag secondly as you quite rightly pointed out was the appointment of elliot abrams to senior position in the government abrams is basically famous for one thing in latin america and that's smuggling weapons under the guise of aid into left wing countries in order to overthrow them in nicaragua in the one nine hundred eighty s. so there's another huge red flag for the media and then no matter how many requests alan how much coverage smuggled into venezuela how much coverage you have you seen

that in western media about i mean they say he lied to congress but they didn't they never really talk about what his lives were go ahead. no almost none absolutely i mean some liberal types might say elliot abrams is a person of nasty character but that's no actual questioning of us empire tall in the media there's no questioning of the fundamental benevolence even though it's the same media who is saying donald trump is a dangerous fascist and we can't can we can't let him have his fingers on the new buttons because he'll invade anyone at any point suddenly and when he does start trying this little i'm not completely behind him yeah it's go back that could i could because i think alan brings up a really good point because the media is so schizophrenia because. the mainstream media is primarily very politically liberal in the us particularly and of course they have had their two year war against trump but then when it comes to bin is

wailing and trumps for something they're kind of throws a wrench into the works they don't really know what to do and that brings us back to zero but it's bad because you're a socialist see that is will go across most of the political spectrum in the united states is socialism is a bad idea and so what bad we have to call. chavez he was a communist dictator is bad you know it is where we're actually brought millions and millions of people lot of prop poverty oh my goodness that must have been socialism i mean their narrative gets so screwed up that it's hard to make any sense of it and that's why they do say but it's the oil i mean i just love watching this whole narrative just completely collapse right in front of your eyes go ahead and cut arcus yeah absolutely that's that's the product of basically two things. presenting venezuela the wall of latin america you know there must be unity of democrats to defeat again this is. our so-called

authoritarian socialist regime in a way and to make it again intelligible for the public and for the american. in they need to re fair to do to this type of references that go back to the cold war . and again justify any any type of policy but. apart from that the unity of the different parties in the united states in the pursuit of the same objective and on the other hand you see that all saw us fall of politics play out here and you see very clearly that venezuela is being collateral victim you know if you will of the debates in the united states where both the liberals and the supporters are afraid of this say an emergency the emergence of a leftist currency in the united states we clearly have seen that president trump.

has started he's campaigned for twenty twenty and basically he's main adversary or the one that he's trying to the big is socialism saying the united states will never be a socialist country therefore he needs to make a point of showing to the u.s. audience that vent you know if ever a very sanders or the democratic socialist of america were to rule the united states the united states will evolve in the same way that venezuela you know has evolved in the in the last few years so again. it is we're going to turn it into like a cartoon it's a cartoon for the media here and that's all it is here you know our right before it came to the studio i was told that my pompei i. don't fall off your chair but he called cuba the biggest imperialist in the western hemisphere. i don't know if there was a better joke or an opposite to exactly what i was told or also we have the try to

venezuela and nicaragua our cuba our you know and now that crusade begins ok and we've got elliott abrams he knows how to get the job done you know it's. would be comical it wasn't so tragic because what during the dirty wars during iran contra the massacres that occurred that have been whitewashed from history people pardoned oh well that was a long time ago that's the typical american way of looking at foreign policy as a long time ago we don't need to revisit it but we have to revisit it because the same thing can happen all over again and one has to wonder. you know that there is way to go and cuba they have all experienced this kind of strong arm positions from the united states but they continue on ok and i have to believe it's because of indigenous support domestic support at home and that's why the venezuelan military hasn't defected is that they would know why dose is defecting

come in what i mean that says that that's again like dealing with a three year old's go ahead alan. you know i'm interested in the us have a decent base of support and venezuela right now it seems that about a third of the country is very much pro material a third is very much an team in europe and then there's a third in the middle who in the middle themselves neither nor why it doesn't quite or doesn't really seem to have that sort of power he did call on the military to rebel he told my parents the vice president at least fifty percent of the military would rebel once he made the call and a very generous estimate is that zero point one percent of the military has gone over and unfortunately if quite or can't turn the public or the military he doesn't really have a very good long term goal frankly he's not good chances i think i think the as things stand right now it looks like the momentum has been lost and i think but also at the same time that's why you have people like elliott abrams around to

terrify people you you know my past you know what i can do and i'll do it again and i think that's the intimidation or a job and that's all the time we have here thanks for my guess in edinburgh adding caracas. and thanks to our viewers for watching us here see you next time and remember. the u.k. wants its sovereignty so with that sovereignty comes chlorinated chicken you know with the good comes the you know you get a load of bricks and now you're going to get the native to. thank. you both thing aquatic cost.

for you. to come up there and i don't think i want to. pick up because a couple of you show me. tommy. it would be ok son. if i think i want. to go i want to go there for fun. nothing. out of fear of looking me. full of the night.

what holds his hands to you something to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or somehow want to be rich. but you're going to be cross with what before three of them or can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters about how. there should be. i'm sorry.

i. was up. on. the what. you're going to do stuff off of the boy that. i profoundly the decision that this house has taken to and i continue to believe that by fall the best time is you know she's getting to me leave the european union and orderly fashion with the. second blow when the royal person's parliament rejects a reason may's new divorce agreement from the e.u. with a no deal votes coming on wednesday. two decades off the violence conflicts names the troubles in northern ireland and it fears return of the irish republican army.