The Independent UK paper, you did F*** up with the Venezuela news!

[GIGObuster]

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/8/15/205259/595

Venezuela’s Chavez on brink of referendum defeat
By Hannah Baldock
16 August 2004
© Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

“The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, looked to be losing his grip on power last night as exit polls showed him to be trailing the opposition by almost a million votes.”

“The figures were early indications that, for the first time in the country’s history, the President may have his term in office cut short by a referendum.”

“The mid-morning results showed that the opposition, already boasting an enormous 1,758,000 votes to Chavez’s 798,000, is well on its way to reaching the target of 3.76 million votes it needs to oust the authoritarian, left-wing President. Turn-out for the referendum was high, with millions of Venezuelans queuing from the early hours at polling stations all over the oil-rich country to decide the political fate of the firebrand Mr Chavez.”

Let’s talk about lousy, lazy, yellow journalism, and in a left-leaning paper, too. First, it’s a bit early for such predictions, no? Second, it’s still 8:15PM on the 15th here in Caracas, too early to legally release results, hell, the polls are still open for four more hours! Third, let’s have a source for these numbers, Hannah. There are no “mid-morning results”! The only source, and I use the term loosely, to claim to release early results was Enrique Mendoza, a premiere member of the opposition group Coordinadora Democratica [sic], hardly an unbiased source, and he was shot down when the government banned early results.

Well, once again Narconews (news against the war on drugs in Latin America) proved to be an accurate source of news, but this Hannah Baldock in Caracas just ruined my night, of course I was also sick with a bug and I could not sleep well, so I wanted to see how the expected (by the Venezuela blogsters of the left) victory of Chavez was going.

I have to say here that I am ambivalent of Chavez winning or losing, the biggest victory goes to the people of Venezuela by embracing democracy.

Everything was going in a way that was pissing the corporate press, when all of the sudden, The Independent of the UK popped up with that headline. It was too much, I now wanted to know then how the left sources I liked got the buzz from the people of Venezuela so wrong, and then pit them…

It turned that The Independent, a tabloid that leans to the left, got to swallow hook line and sinker what it turned to be the biased polls of the opposition in Venezuela. 2 hours after midnight, I was still trying make sense of the contradictions when suddenly the Independent removed the article, and the facts of the matter appeared in a new article:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=551965

But here is the thing, there was no acknowledgment of the snafu, and no mention of a correction, so Be Fruitful and Multiply you!* The Independent and Hannah Baldock!

Although my flu was one cause of it, you caused even more misery by making me surf for hours to find more info on what happened, and instead of coming clean; you only called the article “NEW!!” (the red banner has since disappeared)

So, I don’t care you are left leaning, I rather then thrust and get my news of Venezuela from the BBC or the blogsters that turned to be once again on the money.

Bloody tabloid reporter!……

[sub]… Now, where is my Nyquil?!?[/sub]

*However, not quite in those words! (Tip to the hat to Woody Allen)

[ruadh]

The Independent isn’t a tabloid, and it’s not terribly left-leaning either IMHO.

Still, very surprised about this.

[GIGObuster]

@ruadh

The Independent isn’t a tabloid, and it’s not terribly left-leaning either IMHO.

With behaviour* like that, it sure looks like a tabloid now!

• (that is the spelling in merry old England, eh? )

[Dead_Badger]

@GIGObuster

• (that is the spelling in merry old England, eh? )

Indeedy. Now try to pronounce “Featherstonehaugh” :).

To be fair to them, I think the mistake was probably due to the fact that they are, to put it technically, utterly fucked. They have the circulation of an octagenarian smoker with rubber bands round his wrists, and all the financial security that goes with it. Their average issue is wafer-thin, and while they may claim that their photo-less front pages are an “experiment in bold design”, it’s actually because they can’t afford any decent ones. I don’t think they’re very left-wing either, just up themselves (Private Eye, a satirical magazine, calls them the Indescribablysanctimonious, and with good reason).

So, what do you think of the recall vote? I mainly get my news from the Economist, who think he’s disastrous both economically and politically. As a result I was quite surprised to see him win…

[tagos]

My WAG is that they caught the early announcement from the opposition that was faked to look like an official announcement and claimed victory and the truth didn’t emerge until after their deadline for early editions.

I live in the North and my copy had that claim in. No big deal if you ask me. They certainly covered the result in detail the next day.

[GIGObuster]

@Dead Badger

So, what do you think of the recall vote? I mainly get my news from the Economist, who think he’s disastrous both economically and politically. As a result I was quite surprised to see him win…

As I mentioned in the OP, I see Chavez as the choice of the people of Venezuela, and that the vote was a triumph of democracy regardless of the outcome, It may be true* that he is only a populist, and that his reforms are a sham, but the fact is, the poor people see the reforms as helpful. Thanks to Oil, Venezuela is one of the few countries were there is no excuse for the government to not help the needy. The sad thing is, among the opposition, you don’t see a Levitt:

http://www.time.com/time/time100/builder/profile/levitt2.html

Yet however much it may have been a triumph of free enterprise, Levittown depended on massive government assistance. The Federal Housing Administration guaranteed the loans that banks made to builders. Then the Veterans Administration gave buyers low-interest mortgages to purchase those houses.

Thus the risk to the lenders was small, and so were the houses: 750 sq. ft., two bedrooms, living room and kitchen, with an unfinished second floor and no garage. All the same, compared with the cramped arrangements of the cities, even a place that size seemed sumptuous and full of potential. Levitt understood this well enough to see himself as more than a builder. He was a prime facilitator of the American Dream in its cold war formulation. “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist,” he once said. “He has too much to do.”

The sad thing is also, that the leaders of the opposition in Venezuela would die first than to do offer real reforms like Levitt and the US government did then.

Speaking of the Economist, I have their number, the almost total failure of US economists on predicting the sorry figures of the job report of last month, shows me that ideology is getting too much on the way of accurate information gathering.

And finally: while the press in Europe is generally more fair, the press in the US is more rightist now than I have seen in years, coming back to Venezuela: It is even worse there, the mainstream is shamelessly anti-Chavez, (Some dictator! Still allows freedom of the press!) And it is the one that keeps on misinforming the well to do, by giving them only what they want to hear. The problem is, that eventually reality catches up and then you get economically distressful results.** Considering that many times the mainstream in the US shares info with those outfits, no wonder we get “surprising” results like this one.

*This is IMO even more doubtful now, considering the certifiable lies and errors from the opposition; and that they are also, many times, the source for the criticisms against Chavez reforms.

** Oil markets actually liked the result, so I wonder how disastrous he really is.

[fortytwo]

@GIGObuster

With behaviour* like that, it sure looks like a tabloid now!

• (that is the spelling in merry old England, eh? )

Absolutely, my dear old thing.

I think the Independent would be disappointed to to be classed in the mould* of our other tabloids which are barely newspapers-just trivia and (seeing as this is the pit) tits.
However you may be interested to know that the Times also brings out a version of its newspaper in tabloid form.
The Independent has struggled for years to make an impact and sales have increased I believe by changing to the tabloid form. It’s not inconceivable that all the broadsheets might produce a tabloid version if they smell an increase in sales.

• Now that you’re getting the hang of spelling correctly, try this one next. After that we’ll move on to words like fetus, which is correctly spelt (another difference?) like this-foetus.