Venezuela's Chávez as Everyman

By Gary Payne

For Hugo Chavez is not merely the President of this poor majority, but the long-stifled expression of its collective historical frustration and the embodiment of its hopes. Hopes that would have seemed terribly naïve only a few years ago.

What is Happening in Venezuela?

By M. Junaid Alam with Jonah Gindin

One could easily imagine the North American media playing a similar role to the Venezuelan media were leftist governments ever to be elected there. In early December the Venezuelan National Assembly passed a law on social responsibility in the media. Critics, predictably including the Inter-American Press Association (an owners' club masquerading unconvincingly as a journalists' rights association), have denounced the new law as an attack on free speech. What they of course mean is that it is an attack on their unfettered power to manipulate Venezuelan politics from the newsroom.