Western media's obsession with independent leaders

[Arash]

Al-Akhbar
March 11, 2013

Obsession with Chavez

By Dr. As'ad AbuKhalil
Professor of political science at California State University

Western media suffers from many severe problems in its professionalism and credibility: proximity to ruling governments is one of them. But there is another problem: there is a self-congratulatory tone to much of Western media. They regard themselves as the gold standard when their independence from governments may have decreased over time and when real investigative journalistic work is being undertaken by media in developing countries.

One can't accuse Western media of (or praise them for) standing up for principles of free speech. Western media succumbed unquestionably and uncritically to the intimidation and thought control imposed by Bush's "war on terrorism."

Take the obsession with Chavez and Mugabe. Of course, the rule of Chavez is quite different from the rule of Mugabe, but Western media are obsessed with those two. The plight of white farmers (and the plight of wild animals) seems to be the only object of concern for Western journalists.

Cartoons in the Economist and other serious Western media focus on enemies of the U.S. as examples of tyranny and repression. But this is not warranted if measured by the amount of repression. Mugabe and Chavez are both far less intolerant and far less repressive that the clients of the West in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and UAE, among other places where tyranny is welcomed as long as the tyrant is submissive to Western political, military, and economic interests.

Mugabe, as repressive as he is, respected the results of an election that went against his interest, while America's tyrants don't allow elections and don't even permit the existence of political opposition. Western media mocked Chavez because he compelled all media in Venezuela (including opposition media) to carry his speeches live, but in many of the pro-U.S. dictatorships Western media are not even allowed to exist. We are talking about countries, like Kuwait, where a mere tweet can lead to imprisonment and a stiff sentence, while the organization Reporters without Borders honors the Kuwaiti royal family by granting it a most advanced status in its annual ranking of press freedom around the world.

And Western media had to grudgingly and belatedly admit that there is a large base of support for Chavez in Venezuela. Some Western media shamelessly mocked supporters of Chavez for being poor, while the Associated Press (AP) faulted Chavez for spending Venezuela's oil wealth on social programs instead of building monuments to bad taste, as the Persian Gulf's Arab rulers have done.

Chavez was provided reasons to disrespect the electoral process in Venezuela given the heavy handed, covert and overt, American intervention in the affairs of that country, including the resort to a silly coup that intended to mimic the success of Operation Ajax.

Other Western media admitted that Chavez won elections but maintained that it was arranged through gerrymandering. Hardly anyone in the Western media can argue that the darling of Western governments (and media, which treat him as the expert on Arab youth and uprisings), the Jordanian potentate, manages better elections or less gerrymandering.

So one wonders: why have Western media been obsessed so much and for so long with Chavez?

If the degree of obsession is a function of the degree of repression by a leader, than there are many world leaders who deserve such obsession from Western media. You hardly see Western media obsessing over the acute repression in the archaic system of the House of Saud. Clearly, Western media obsess with leaders according to the degree to which those leaders irk and challenge the U.S. and its Western allies.

A leader is frowned upon and lampooned not by virtue of his oppression but by virtue of his defiance to the political will of the U.S. If the U.S.-engineered coup in Venezuela succeeded in ousting Chavez a few years ago, and if a pro-U.S. tyranny was established in Venezuela, Western media would have produced far less articles about Venezuela and about the mismanagement of the economy (do you notice that an unfavorable cliché is always used about the economy of a country which is not aligned with the U.S.? Ever since I came to the U.S., year after year, I have been reading that Iran's economy is – you guessed it – "in shambles.")

http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angry-corner/obsession-chavez