hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are 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 that's 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 lady and former vice minister of foreign affairs under president hugo chavez our gentleman rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it 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 and the media hysteria over fairness will of this latest bridge a chapter across the western media we saw reports that make true it was a dictator it was starving its 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'm going to 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 shame 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 in those supporters i was after your defenders of democracy and the reality is that they don't know anything about you know who are 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 way against the mill. government on the other hand those same western media. in a very proactive way tried to depict this again as you said as 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 in bellwood should 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 this 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 have this random why doeg 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. 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 or described the sanctions as a kin to a medieval siege and even to clear 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 have put 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 caracas. absolutely there mainstream media never question the legality or even the rationality of this sanctioning approach the perceived this policy which is again which finds only supports in the united states and the hmong the most conservative repair center there was of the of the polity

the united states that approaching you know the interventionist. policy of the united states these are the 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 that there needs to be a very simplistic approach sanctions pressure 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 does this random guy picked plucked out of obscurity. when they reported on his inauguration they actually rewrote history saying he himself swore himself in which is factually not true what so whether 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 were supporting this upstart that is taking the title is all you know it was what i could do was basically being ignored

because he's irrelevant in his own country he only has rubble and so when he goes to a rock concert in god colombia go ahead. yeah i mean the media are presenting why i inquired or do was 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 why 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 the support. if you. look at the 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 can look at like i think i was in honduras of the 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 our city .

during the great depression which are old enough to remember that it was most of the family were working. there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objectively day but there was an expectation of the things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america was shaped by the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduce democracy at tax so low down engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to. one set of rules for the rich. that's what happens when you put her into the hands of narrows. will switch will is dedicated to increasing power for itself just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of

america. welcome back across not where all things are considered i'm peter we're discussing media malpractise. ok let's go back to demeanor in his demeanor i'm probably will probably probably surprise me by saying this but i'm actually a 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 any 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. i'm a 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 administrations 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 venezuela is about venezuela being a socialist country and and again this distinction between a country with a socialist government which you can find for instance in spain you have 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 you know of or 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 with 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 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 you know people rather than the of opinions competition among them and as you rightly. underscored previously latin america is of course a continent where you can find countries they on daughters where there are serious democratic challenges or even the rule where you have a president that has not been elected because the previous. had to resign over corruption again you have complicated situations in many countries and venezuela

you know is part of that reality and those challenges that that are common to to latin america and to developing nations in general so these these 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 this previously in this in this show you know i'm 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 but truly i'm capacities you know i think that's his code you know we want it we wish we had we couldn'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 low 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 but 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 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 law. i mean countries in order to overthrow them like you did in nicaragua in the

one nine hundred eighty s. so there's another huge red flag for the media and then what i require 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 did they never really talk about what his lives were go ahead. no almost none absolutely i mean some liberal types might say elliott 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 political ends 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 yet to treat it as 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 then it kind of throws them 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 way we're actually brought millions and millions of people lot of proper 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. basically two things. presenting venezuela the berling war 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 audience 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 here if you will of the debates in the united states where both the liberals and the supporters are afraid of this a an emergency the emergence of

a leftist currency in the united states we clearly have seen that president trump. has started he's reelected and 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 bernie sanders or the democratic socialists 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 again. as we would turn it into like a cartoon it's a cartoon for the media here and that's all it is here you know hour and right before it came to the studio i was told that my. live don't fall off your chair. but he called cuba the biggest imperialists in the western hemisphere so i did that

what i do know that that's a joke or not but that's exactly what i was told there also we have the troika venezuela and cuba you know and now that crusade begins ok and we got elliott abrams he knows how to get the job done you know it's it would be comical that 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 if they would you know why doses defecting come in what i mean that says that that's again like dealing with a three year olds go ahead alan. you know i'm interested does have a decent base of support in 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 source 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 a can't turn the public or the military he doesn't really have a very good long term goal for. he's not good chances i think i think though 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 the people like elliott abrams around to to terrify people you you know my past you know what i can do and i'll do it again i think that's the intimidation and that's all the time we have here thanks for my guess in edinburgh and in caracas and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. you next time and remember. i don't think the numbers. they've matter us with over one trillion dollars of debt more than ten white collar crime happens. eighty five percent of global wealth he longs to be ultra rich eight percent world market thirty percent

some with one hundred to five hundred three per second per second and when he rose to twenty thousand dollars. china's building two point one billion dollars ai industrial park but don't let the numbers over. the only number you need to remember one one business show you know ford in the one and only boom but. come up come on. both they are quite. for you. if. you come out for fair and out of the

still think i want to. justify. something awful because a couple of. you just got tired of me. or the coach there would be ok so i'm. more gentle for a while for you if they think you know how to. fish and to go about you want to steal or from others get on for nothing. oh my god i'm going away on a fearful thing here. in the united be so. join me every thursday on the alex simon chill and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you there.

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this is the humiliating defeat for the government receiving the prime minister. in the country with the same promise. amaze tweaks that plan is transpired m.p.'s will next vote on whether or not to leave the e.u. with out a deal. a new documentary reveals that supporters of terror group islamic state have infiltrated a greek refugee camp targeting religious minorities there with violence we talked to the film's producer also.