Controlling what we think is not solely about controlling what we know - it is also about controlling who we respect and who we find ridiculous.

Thus we find that Western leaders are typically reported without adjectives preceding their names. George Bush is simply "US president George Bush". Condoleeza Rice is "the American secretary of state Condoleeza Rice". Tony Blair is just "the British prime minister".

The leader of Venezuela, by contrast, is "controversial left-wing president Hugo Chavez" for the main BBC TV news. (12:00, May 14, 2006). He is as an "extreme left-winger," while Bolivian president Evo Morales is "a radical socialist", according to Jonathan Charles on BBC Radio 4. (6 O'Clock News, May 12, 2006)

Imagine the BBC introducing the US leader as "controversial right-wing president George Bush", or as an "extreme right-winger". Is Bush - the man who illegally invaded Iraq on utterly fraudulent pretexts - +less+ controversial than Chavez? Is Bush less far to the right of the political spectrum than Chavez is to the left?

For the Independent on Sunday, Chavez is "Venezuela's outspoken President". (Stephen Castle and Raymond Whitaker, 'Heralding the end of US imperialism,' May 14, 2006) For the Mirror, he is a "controversial leader" called "'the Crackers from Caracas' by his own supporters". (Rosa Prince, 'He calls Bush "Hitler" and Blair "the pawn",' May 16, 2006) He is an "aggressively populist left-wing leader", the Times writes. (Richard Owen, 'Pope tells Chavez to mend his ways,' May 12, 2006) He is a "left-wing firebrand," the Independent reports. (Guy Adams, 'Pandora: 'Chavez stirs up a degree of controversy at Oxford,' May 15, 2006) He is a "Left wing firebrand" according to the Evening Standard. (Pippa Crerar, 'Chavez to meet the Mayor,' May 12, 2006) He is an "international revolutionary firebrand", according to the Observer. (Peter Beaumont, 'The new kid in the barrio,' May 7, 2006)

A Guardian news report describes Chavez as nothing less than "the scourge of the United States". (Duncan Campbell and Jonathan Steele,' The Guardian, May 15, 2006) Although this was a news report, not a comment piece, the title featured the required tone of mockery: "Revolution in the Camden air as Chavez - with amigo Ken - gets a hero's welcome".

An Independent report declared of Chavez:

"He has been described as a fearless champion of the oppressed poor against the corrupt rich and their American sponsors. But also as a dangerous demagogue subsidising totalitarian regimes with his country's oil wells." (Kim Sengupta, 'Britain's left-wing "aristocracy" greet their hero Chavez,' The Independent, May 15, 2006)

Imagine an Independent news report providing a similarly 'balanced' description of Bush or Blair using language of the kind employed in the second sentence. Again, mockery was a central theme: "And yesterday in the People's Republic of Camden the villains remained very much President George W Bush, his acolyte Tony Blair, big business and the forces of reaction."

Younger readers may have missed the BBC's prime time TV series Citizen Smith (1977-80), which lampooned a fictional organisation called The Tooting Popular Front, consisting of six die-hard Marxist losers, and its deluded dreams of achieving radical change. This is a favourite media theme - pouring scorn on popular movements is an absolute must for mainstream journalism. Thus Richard Beeston reported in The Times this week:

"Hugo Chavez's Latin American bandwagon descended on London yesterday, briefly enlivening a dull Sunday in Camden with the sound of drums, the cries of revolution and the waving of banners.

"At the start of his controversial two-day visit to London, the Venezuelan President succeeded in attracting an eclectic group of supporters ranging from elderly CND activists to young anti-globalisation campaigners, members of the Socialist Workers' Party and even the odd Palestinian protester." (Beeston, 'Chavez fails to paint the town red in Camden,' The Times, May 15, 2006)

This recalled the Observer's September 2002 account of what, at the time, had been London's greatest anti-war march in a generation. Euan Ferguson wrote:

"It was back to the old days, too, in terms of types. All the oldies and goodies were there. The Socialist Workers' Party, leafleting outside Temple Tube station by 11 am. ('In this edition: Noam Chomsky in Socialist Worker!'). CND, and ex-Services CND. The Scottish Socialist Party. 'Scarborough Against War and Globalisation', which has a lovely ring of optimism to it, recalling the famous Irish provincial leader column in 1939: 'Let Herr Hitler be warned, the eyes of the Skibereen Eagle are upon him.' Many, many Muslim groups, and most containing women and children, although some uneasy thoughts pass through your mind when you see a line of pretty six-year-old black-clad Muslim toddlers walking ahead of the megaphone chanting 'George Bush, we know you/Daddy was a killer too,' and singing about Sharon and Hitler." (Ferguson, 'A big day out in Leftistan,' The Observer, September 29, 2002)

The emphasis, again, was on the absurdity of a ragtag army of Citizen Smith-style oddballs who imagined they could somehow make a difference to a real world run by 'serious' people. The idea is that the public should roll their eyes and shake their heads in embarrassment at such delusions - and turn away.

Hidden far out of sight are the life and death issues motivating such protests - in 2002 the marchers were, after all, attempting to prevent a war that has since killed and mutilated hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It is not inconceivable that if British and American journalists like Ferguson had emphasised the desperate importance and urgency of the anti-war protests, rather than sneering at them, those civilians might still be alive today.

Similarly, the press has barely hinted at the unimaginable horror and desperate hopes buried beneath the mocking of Chavez - namely, the suffering of Latin American people under very real Western economic and military violence. The Independent on Sunday managed this vague mention:

"Mr Morales was, the Venezuelan President said, a direct descendant of an indigenous Latin American people, adding: 'These are oppressed people who are rising. They are rising with peace, not weapons. Europe should listen to that.'" (Stephen Castle and Raymond Whitaker, 'Chavez on tour,' Independent on Sunday, May 14, 2006)

The tragedy out of which these people are arising, and how their hopes of a better life have been systematically crushed by Western force in the past, was of course not explored. The Guardian also managed a tiny reference to the reality:

"His [Chavez's] unabashed opposition to US foreign policy, and the pressure it has produced from Washington, tap into the deep vein of suspicion and resentment that two centuries of US invasions, coups, and economic domination have aroused in Latin America and the Caribbean." (Jonathan Steele and Duncan Campbell, 'The world according to Chavez,' The Guardian, May 16, 2006)

But that was it. As the Guardian writers know full well, these comments appear in a context of almost complete public ignorance of just what the United States has done to Latin America - a subject to which we will return in Part 2.

In 2004, the American media watch site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) reported that a search of major US newspapers turned up the phrase "death squad" just five times in connection with former US president Ronald Reagan in the days following his death in June 2004 - twice in commentaries and twice in letters to the editor. Remarkably, only one news article mentioned death squads as part of Reagan's legacy. (Media Advisory: 'Reagan: Media Myth and Reality,' June 9, 2004, www.fair.org) As we have discussed elsewhere, US-backed death squads brought hell to Latin America under Reagan. (see our Media Alerts: 'Reagan - Visions Of The Damned': http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/040610_Reagan_Visions_1.HTM and http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/040615_Reagan_Visions_2.HTM.)

Quite simply the British and American press do not cover the West's mass killing of Latin Americans.

Radical, Maverick, Firebrands - The Subliminal Smears

A Daily Telegraph comment piece continued the pan-media smearing of Chavez:

"Now the anticipation is over, and today, flush with six trillion dollars worth of oil reserves, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, flies in to fill the despot-of-the-month slot at London mayor Ken Livingstone's lunch table." (William Langley, 'Welcome to the El Presidente show,' The Daily Telegraph, May 14, 2006)

The Independent on Sunday (IoS) wrote:

"An icon of the anti-globalisation movement, Mr Chavez's brand of aggressive socialism is taken seriously because of his country's vast oil resources." (Stephen Castle and Raymond Whitaker, 'Chavez on tour,' Independent on Sunday, May 14, 2006)

We wait in vain for an IoS news report referring to Bush and Blair's "brand" of "aggressive" and in fact "militant" capitalism - this would be biased news reporting, after all. Likewise, the suggestion that Bush and Blair's aggressive support for "democracy" is taken seriously only because of their economic and military power.

The Observer noted that Chavez has a "growing regional profile", which is "built on a mix of populist rhetoric and his country's oil wealth". The report added that Chavez "has been publicly feuding with Bush, whom he has likened to Adolf Hitler - with Tony Blair dismissed as 'the main ally of Hitler.'" ('Chavez offers oil to Europe's poor,' The Observer, May 14, 2006)

In responding to similar comments in the Times, Julia Buxton of the University of Bradford has been all but alone in providing some background:

"To place this statement in context, Chavez was compared to Adolf Hitler by the US Secretary of State for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, during a visit to Paraguay. President Chavez rejected the comparison and countered that if any individual were comparable to Hitler, it would be President Bush." (See Buxton's excellent analysis here: http://www.vicuk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=29)

The Times' 'Pandora' diary column wrote:

"Ken Livingstone has invited the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, to lunch at City Hall. Even by the London Mayor's standards, it's a provocative gesture - Chavez has a controversial record on human rights - and several guests have refused to attend." (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2171200,00.html)

Channel 4 News asked of Chavez: "Is he a hero of the left or a villain in disguise?"

For the media, of course, a "hero of the left" +is+ a "villian in disguise", so viewers were in effect being asked if Chavez was a villain or a villain. Like many other media, Channel 4 patronised the Venezuelan president as "a global poster boy for the left". The same programme later asked if he was "a hero of the left or a scoundrel of all democrats?"

In similar vein, Daniel Howden observed in the Independent:

"Not surprisingly for a man who divides the world, Hugo Chavez is greeted as a saviour or a saboteur wherever he goes. The Venezuelan President seems immune to nuance and perfectly able to reduce the world to Chavistas or to Descualdos, the 'squalid ones' as his supporters dismiss those who try to depose him." (Dowden, 'Hugo Chavez: Venezualean [sic] leader divides world opinion. But who is he, and what is he up to in Britain?' The Independent, May 13, 2006)

The reference to a lack of "nuance" is a coded smear with which regular readers will be familiar. Chavez is in good company. Steve Crawshaw wrote in the Independent: "Chomsky knows so much... but seems impervious to any idea of nuance." (Crawshaw, 'Furious ideas with no room for nuance,' The Independent, February 21, 2001)

The BBC's former director of news, Richard Sambrook, told the Hutton inquiry that BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan had failed to appreciate the "nuances and subtleties" of broadcast journalism. (Matt Wells, Richard Norton-Taylor and Vikram Dodd, 'Gilligan left out in cold by BBC,' The Guardian, September 18, 2003)

Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow wrote in the Guardian of John Pilger: "Some argue the ends justify [Pilger's] means, others that the world is a more subtle place than he allows." (Snow, 'Still angry after all these years,' The Guardian, February 25, 2001)

In 2002, Bill Hayton, a BBC World Service editor, advised us at Media Lens: "If your language was more nuanced it would get a better reception." (Email to Editors, November 16, 2002)

The Channel 4 programme cited above went on to describe the Iraqi cleric Moqtadr al Sadr by his official media title: "the radical cleric Moqtadr al Sadr". Likewise, the media invariably refer to "the militant group Hamas". The media would of course never dream of referring to "radical prime minister Tony Blair" or to "the militant Israeli Defence Force".

The reason was unconsciously expressed by Channel 4 news presenter Alex Thomson in response to a Media Lens reader who had suggested, reasonably, that "a terrorist is one who brings terror to another person". Thomson responded:

"Your definition of a terrorist as one bringing terror is nonsensical as it would encompass all military outfits from al Qaeda to the Royal Fusilliers." (Forwarded to Media Lens, February 25, 2005)

It is inconceivable to the mainstream media that Western armies could be responsible for terrorism, no matter how much terror they actually create. Likewise, it is inconceivable that Western leaders could be described as "militant" or "fundamentalist". This indicates that these adjectives are smear words - they mean, approximately, 'bad'. More specifically, they mean 'a threat to Western interests,' which is why, by definition, they cannot be used to refer +to+ the West.

The use and non-use of these words shepherd viewers and readers towards the idea that leaders like Bush and Blair are reasonable, rational, respectable figures who must be described with colourless, neutral language.

The deeper implication - all the more powerful because it is unstated, almost subliminal - is that figures like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales do not merit balanced 'professional' media treatment - the rules do not apply to them because they are beyond the pale.

Because almost all journalists repeat this bias - and because the public imagine journalists are simply well-informed, independent observers who just happen to reach the same conclusions on who is worthy of respect - the impression given is that the media consensus is the only sane view in town.

Before we know it, we find ourselves accepting the corporate media view as our own. If we see enough journalists smearing "maverick", "controversial", "left-wing", "Gorgeous George" Galloway, we will likely find ourselves responding: 'I can't stand that guy!' But how many of us will really know why, beyond feeling that there is 'something about him I don't like'? And how many of us will have reflected that, of all MPs, Galloway has at least been uniquely honest in his opposition to the Iraq war?

As for that other "maverick Chavez" (Sunday Times, February 19, 2006), the Financial Times noted that he was invited to London by Ken Livingstone: "London's maverick mayor." (David Lehmann, 'Why we should bother about Chavez and his politics,' May 15, 2006)

In Part 2 we will examine the realities of Western political, economic and military violence in Latin America - realities that are consistently ignored by the corporate media.

MEDIA ALERT: RIDICULING CHAVEZ - THE MEDIA HIT THEIR STRIDE - PART 2

In Part 1 of this alert we showed how the mainstream media have been united in depicting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as an extreme, absurd and threatening figure. In essence, the public has been urged to consider Chavez beyond the pale of respectable politics.

As John Pilger has observed, British media attacks "resemble uncannily those of the privately owned Venezuelan television and press, which called for the elected government to be overthrown". (Pilger, 'Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society,' The Guardian, May 13, 2006;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1773908,00.html)

We focused mainly on news reports, skipping many of the more madcap comment pieces. Aleksander Boyd, for example, wrote in the Times of how: "The Venezuelan President aligns himself with dictators, human rights abusers and notorious narcoterrorists." (Boyd, 'Guess who's coming to dinner with Red Ken?,' The Times, May 9, 2006)

No surprise, then, to learn that in thrall to this monster: "Venezuela has ceased to be a real democracy: it now exists instead in the murky twilight world between democracy and dictatorship, where there is still a free press and a nod to holding elections." (Ibid)

In fact Chavez is one of the world's most popular heads of state. Boyd has been quoted and heard elsewhere - in The Sun and on BBC Radio 2, for example. Julia Buxton of the University of Bradford responded in a letter to the Times:

"Mr Boyd has been linked to threats of violence against people working and writing on Venezuelan related issues for the past few years. He has also organised disruptive protest actions that have undermined public security and he has published libellous and inflammatory articles on Islam, Middle Eastern and South American politics." (http://www.vicuk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=29)

It might be argued that media reporting simply reflects a dismal reality - perhaps Chavez +is+ irresponsible. But in fact the current media smear reveals more about power relations in Britain than it does about politics in Venezuela. In 1992, Jeff Cohen of the US media watch site Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described media coverage afforded to one important Western ally:

"During that whole period when the United States was helping build up the military and economic might of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the issue of his human rights abuses was off the media agenda. There was this classic in the New York Post, a tabloid in New York. After the [1990] crisis began, they had a picture of Saddam Hussein patting the British kid on the head and their banner headline was 'Child Abuser'. That was very important to us [at FAIR] and very ironic, because Amnesty International and other human rights groups had released studies in 1984 and 1985 which showed that Saddam Hussein's regime regularly tortured children to get information about their parents' views. That just didn't get the coverage.

"It shows one of the points FAIR has made constantly: that when a foreign government is in favour with the United States, with the White House, its human rights record is basically off the mainstream media agenda, and when they do something that puts them out of favour with the US government, the foreign government's human rights abuses are, all of a sudden, major news." (Quoted, David Barsamian, Stenographers To Power, Common Courage Press, 1992, p.142)

In a review of press reporting on Iran under the mass murdering Shah - a Western ally installed and armed by Britain and America - William A. Dorman and Ehsan Omad noted:

"We have been unable to find a single example of a news and feature story in the American mainstream press that uses the label 'dictator'." (Dorman and Omad, 'Reporting Iran the Shah's Way,' Columbia Journalism Review, January-February 1979)

British media performance is close to identical, as we have documented many times.

Of the hundreds of media reports on Chavez in recent weeks, almost none have depicted events in Venezuela as a fundamentally positive and urgently needed attempt to improve the condition of impoverished people. In a rare exception, John Pilger wrote in the Guardian:

"Mavis Mendez has seen, in her 95 years, a parade of governments preside over the theft of tens of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it flown to Miami, together with the steepest descent into poverty ever known in Latin America; from 18% in 1980 to 65% in 1995, three years before Chávez was elected. 'We didn't matter in a human sense,' she said. 'We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. In the east of the city, where the mansions are, we were invisible, or we were feared. Now I can read and write my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have lived to witness it.'" (Pilger, op. cit)

Almost nothing of this has been reported elsewhere. Do the journalists of our corporate press just not care about people like Mavis Mendez? Does it not matter to them that Chavez is, as Pilger writes, "a threat, especially to the United States... the threat of a good example in a continent where the majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington-designed peonage"? (Ibid)

In all the voluminous coverage, there has been close to zero analysis of why so many Latin Americans living in resource-rich countries have been so poor for so long. The role of the West in this catastrophe has been essentially invisible. Instead, a remarkable leader in the Independent on Sunday observed:

"Mr Chavez is an unabashed admirer of Fidel Castro, which gives his attachment to democracy a temporary and improvised feel. As do the human rights abuses of which the Venezuelan government is guilty.

"Most sinister of all, perhaps, is Mr Chavez's use of anti-US sentiment to create an external threat in the classic gambit of the tyrant. As we reported recently, he has formed a militia of ordinary Venezuelan citizens to mobilise against the threat of an 'invasion' by unspecified enemies. That is not the sane or balanced action of a committed democrat." (Leader, 'Why Hugo Chavez is no hero,' Independent on Sunday, May 14, 2006)

Can it be that the media ingénues at the Independent on Sunday are completely unaware of the reality of Latin American politics?

Killing Hope - Of Jackals And Economic Hit Men

In his book, Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes the role he played in the West's devastation of the Third World for profit, Latin America very much included. Perkins compares himself to the slave traders of colonial times:

"I had been the heir of those slavers who had marched into African jungles and hauled men and women off to waiting ships. Mine had been a more modern approach, subtler - I never had to see the dying bodies, smell the rotting flesh, or hear the screams of agony." (Perkins, Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man, Ebury Press, 2005, p.148; http://www.johnperkins.org/)

In January 1971, Perkins was hired by American big business to forecast economic growth in Third World countries. These forecasts were used to justify massive international loans, which funded engineering and construction projects, so funnelling money back to US corporations while enriching a small Third World elite.

Perkins explains that his real task - rarely discussed but always understood in high government and business circles - was to deliberately exaggerate growth forecasts in countries like Peru, Ecuador, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The goal was for these countries to +fail+ to achieve their inflated targets and so be unable to repay their loans. The point being, as Perkins writes, that Third World leaders would then "become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty". As a result, American interests "can draw on them whenever we desire - to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of US engineering and construction companies become fabulously wealthy". (Ibid, p.xi)

The "needs" include military bases, votes at the UN, cheap access to oil and other human and natural resources. Perkins describes this as a non-military means for achieving "the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known". (Ibid, p.139)

Bankrupt debtor countries have thus been forced to spend much of their national wealth simply on repaying these debts even as their people sicken and die from malnutrition and poverty. For example, international banks dominated by Washington loaned Ecuador billions of dollars from the 1970s onwards so that it could hire engineering and construction firms to improve life for the rich. In the space of thirty years, poverty grew from 50 to 60 per cent, under- or unemployment increased from 15 to 70 per cent, public debt increased from $240 million to $16 billion, and the share of national resources allocated to the poor fell from 20 per cent to 6 per cent.

Today, Ecuador is required to devote nearly 50 per cent of its national budget to debt repayment - leaving almost no resources for millions of citizens classified as "dangerously impoverished". Out of every $100 worth of oil pumped from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to Ecuadorian people dying from lack of food and potable water.

Perkins is clear that, waiting in the wings should the economic hit men (EHMs) fail, are the real hit men - "the jackals". He writes of Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, who both died in plane crashes:

"Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We EHMs failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in." (Ibid, p.ix)

Perkins writes of Roldós's death in May 1981:

"It had all the markings of a CIA-orchestrated assassination. I understood that it had been executed so blatantly in order to send a message. The new Reagan administration, complete with its fast-draw Hollywood cowboy image, was the ideal vehicle for delivering such a message. The jackals were back, and they wanted Omar Torrijos and everyone else who might consider joining an anti-corporate crusade to know it." (Ibid, p.158)

Torrijos was killed just two months later. This is the likely fate that awaits Chavez, Morales, and other Third World leaders currently being ridiculed by the British press.

The last fifty years have seen a vast bloodbath as Washington has funnelled money, weapons and supplies to client dictators and right-wing death squads battling independent nationalism across Latin America. Britain's only left-wing daily newspaper, the Morning Star - with a tiny circulation of between 13,000-14,000 - is a lone voice describing some of these horrors. Dr Francisco Dominguez, head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University, writes:

"Military dictatorship, death squads, torture, assassination, economic blockade, economic genocide, military intervention, wanton repression, corruption and every other means intrinsic to capitalist and imperialist 'management techniques' has been utilised to secure the profits of primarily US multinationals and the wealth of the privileged few. Mass unemployment and mass poverty are just two extra means with which to obtain compliance with the economic and political pillage of the continent." (Dominguez, 'Latin America takes centre stage,' Morning Star, November 22, 2005)

John Pilger adds:

"In the US media in the 1980s, the 'threat' of tiny Nicaragua was seriously debated until it was crushed. Venezuela is clearly being 'softened up' for something similar. A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymmetric War against Venezuela, describes Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution as the 'largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism'." (Pilger, op., cit)

Who benefits? The answer is provided by Professor William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz in his study 'Wealth, Income, and Power In the United States'. Domhoff reports that as of 2001, the top 1% of US households owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% had 51%, indicating that just 20% of the people owned 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80%. In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%.

In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Domhoff comments:

"Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America." (G. William Domhoff, 'Wealth, Income, and Power In The United States,' February 2006; http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html)

These fabulously wealthy elites own politics, they own the media, they control what the American people know, see and think. In Britain, the top 5% of the British population own 45% of the nation's wealth - they also run politics, the economy and the media in their own interests.

Naturally, then, elite journalists reflexively declare that the United States and Britain are passionately intent on bringing democracy to the world. A recent BBC radio talk show asked: "Are 100 British soldiers' lives too high a price to pay for democracy in Iraq?" (BBC Radio Five Live)

This, despite the fact that the income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.

Despite achieving bestseller status by word of mouth, Perkins' account has been all but ignored by the mainstream British press since its publication last year, receiving mentions in just four articles. In one of these, a Sunday Times reviewer wrote:

"One measure of the success of an author is whether his book passes the 'laugh out loud' test. John Perkins's had me in stitches. The problem is, it is not meant to." (David Charters, 'A miss not a hit,' Sunday Times, March 5, 2006)

Cynically ignoring the issues and evidence, Charters dismissed the book as "ridiculous": "If it was not so laughable, it could be depressing." The book has received similar treatment in the US press.

We should be under no illusions. The corporate media oppose Chavez because the corporate system is viscerally opposed to policies that are unleashing democratic hopes in Venezuela. It takes a moment's thought to understand that greater democracy, equality, justice and popular empowerment are +not+ in the interests of a system built on exploitation. As John Perkins comments of the media:

"Things are not as they appear... Our media is part of the corporatocracy. The officers and directors who control nearly all our communications outlets know their places; they are taught throughout life that one of their most important jobs is to perpetuate, strengthen, and expand the system they have inherited. They are very efficient at doing so, and when opposed, they can be ruthless." (Perkins, op. cit, p.221)

As long as we support this corporate media system - as long as we hand over our money for its product, for its phoney 'balance' and subliminal smears - it will continue to subordinate the welfare of millions of human beings to corporate greed.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Jonathan Charles at the BBC
Email: jonathan.charles@bbc.co.uk

Write to Stephen Castle at the Independent on Sunday
Email: s.castle@independent.co.uk

Write to Jonathan Steele at the Guardian
Email: jonathan.steele@guardian.co.uk

Write to Kim Sengupta at the Independent
Email: k.sengupta@independent.co.uk

Write to Daniel Howden at the Independent
Email: d.howden@independent.co.uk

Write to Richard Beeston at the Times
Email: richard.beeston@the-times.co.uk

Write to Jim Gray, editor of Channel 4 News
Email: jim.gray@independent.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, director of BBC news
Email: HelenBoaden.Complaints@bbc.co.uk

Please send copies of all emails to Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.org

The first Media Lens book was published in January 2006: 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London). For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here:

http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php

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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media