“Real paramilitaries or Chavist actors?” is the caption by the GVO glob Moonie — who thereby actually misrepresents the alleged facts as stated in the article he blogs that is ostensibly a refutation of the article he is blogging about. They are, says Noticias 24, some kind of weekend paintball warriors or something.
POSPOST (Peru) Paramilitares en Venezuela, denunciados por prensa cercana a Chávez: “U.S.-sponsored Venezuelan paramilitaries denounced by press close to Chávez,” notes my new Peruvian blog buddy, Fernando Obregon Rossi, who is
Consultor, periodista y escritor con más de 25 años de experiencia profesional. He trabajado en prensa, radio y Tv, como director informativo y también para instituciones públicas y privadas. Especialista en marketing político, comunicación corporativa. y desarrollo de medios de comunicación social. Actualmente investigo las diversas plataformas de comunicación en Internett (IPTv, blogs y web 2.0)
Self-styled journalists who double as corporate communications and “political marketing” consultants: A standard “innovation journalism” resume. Compare the “journalists” profiled in
- After the Balkans Infowar, A Marshall Plan for Media; or, Geeks Bearing Grifts?
- Hacks are Flacks! Banana-Republican Business Journalism Illustrated
- Editors and Content Managers: How to Tell the Difference
- Yes, Junior is a Man of Many Cangaceiro Hats
In Brazil, the prime example of this type is Fernando Collor’s flack in chief, Claudio Humberto. Fernando Collor the impeached ex-president recently re-elected Senator from the narcoparamilitary TAZ of Alagoas, where the last electronic election dissolved into FUD and fraud so massive and, er, colorful they ought to make a Hollywood movie about it. See Brazil: Frontier Election Justice in Alagoas TAZ?
In banana republics, journalism is merely a form of political marketing.
See also YouTube and PeruTube: Media and Monstrosities in the Trans-Andean TAZ and Hiya, Maia: The Naked Mayor on Carlos Lacerda.
Obregon uses the “Goebbels” meme to discredit the report.
Venezuela’s News24 refutes the report, saying the guys in the picture are actually something like weekend paintball players. I will translate that for you in a minute, with a sample of some of the copious comments on the item.
Compare Infotainment Crisis at the Jornal do Brasil! From the Fact v. Fiction File, in which a Brazilian newspaper ran photos of a group of actors costumed as drug traffickers as if the fiction were fact.
Then refused to correct itself.
The N24 “rebuttal” of the report in question, which captions this photo “U.S. trains squalid terrorists.”
Could be.
Might not be.
What could be more FUD-like?
Compare David Sasaki’s classic (Hearing O Globo) Voices Online post on the situation in Oaxaca, titled Fear and Misinformation Abound, for another example of this kind of “balance.”
Fear, uncertainty and doubt abound.
That’s (Hearing O Globo) Voices Online in a nutshell.
Really, it’s akin to walking into a crowded theater and shouting “I am supposed to be creating a panic by shouting fire even though there isn’t one!”
It’s not just media pranksterism in the Donald Segretti tradition: it’s incompetetent media pranksterism in the Donald Segretti tradition.
Let’s read.
Podría haber sido una periodística primicia mundial o un reportaje digno del Pulitzer de prensa, pero parece que no va a ser así. En Venezuela,a acaba de salir un reportaje con amplias fotos sobre los “grupos paramilitares” que están siendo entrenados en territorio venezolano (Charallave, Miranda) por instructores de George Bush. Su misión sería desestabilizar el gobierno de Hugo Chávez a través de acciones terroristas. El reportaje muestra ocho fotos espectaculares de los paramilitares (sofisticadamente posadas) y su sola presencia intimida y genera rechazo. Claro que el detalle, es que el reportaje ha salido en un semanario adicto a la prensa de Hugo Chávez, que como sabemos no se caracteriza por su objetividad. No sé porqué me acorde de Goebbels en sus sentencias “Métele miedo, que para eso está la prensa”, o el clásico “Miente, miente, que algo queda”. Vía noticias 24.
It seemed like a world-class piece of reporting, worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, but it might not be. In Venezuela, a report has come out with a number of photos of “paramilitary groups” being trained on Venezuelan territory (Charallave, Miranda) by instructors sent by George Bush. Their mission is reportedly to destabilize the Chávez government through terrorist acts.
Or it might be.
Which is it?
I call this tactic the “dueling noise machine scenario.”
Report that there is confusion on a given subject.
Do nothing to clarify the confusion.
Leave the reader more confused than ever.
Job well done.
If anything characterizes our times, it is a sense of pervading chaos. In every field of human endeavor, the windstorms of change are fast altering the ways we live. Contemporary man is no longer anchored in certainties and thus has lost sight of who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. — The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, quoted in my Spinning the World Backwards.
Another innovation in Journalism 2.0.
I want my news reporting to do the due diligence so I don’t have to.
Time is money. Life is short. Just cut to the chase, please. That sort of thing.
This is the opposite of that.
The report shows eight spectacular photos of the paramilitaries (in sophisticated poses), whose mere presence intimidates and invites rejection. The detail is that the report came out in a weekly that is part of the press addicted to Chávez, which as we known is not characterized by its objectivity.
Actually, I do not know that, at least not in all cases.
Compare Larry Rohter, by the way:
It is no secret that Rio is crime-ridden and quite violent,
The Vea daily, for example, is indeed comparable in some ways to its Brazilian namesake, the weekly Veja — in tone and stridency, at least.
But tone and stridency are not the issue.
Serious fact-checking over time would be required to compare the level of (non)commitment to avoiding the running of nonexistent facts on the part of the respective banana-republican rags.
But Telesur news, for example, does not seem like the Bolivarian TV Globo to me. I need to watch more of it to really get a thorough, but what I have seen indicates a pretty fair grasp of the reality principle. It is usually recognizable as Journalism 1.0, judging from my skimpy survey so far.
It’s opinionated, but I have not yet caught it lying to me. And yes, I can say the same thing about some of the conservative Latin American press organs I read as well.
The Peruvian political marketer trots out the Goebbels meme now:
I do not know why, but the words of Goebbels come to mind: “Spread fear, that’s what the press is there for,” or the classic “Lie and keep on lying until the lie sticks.”
The gentleman does not refute any of the factual assertions in the article — or indeed, report what they are.
So this is not really a refutation of the article.
It’s a pure FUD posting.
So let’s try and fact-check the article and the fact-check of the article and see which stands up better.
Another clue that Mr. Obregon is a GVO Moonie: his post on pro-RCTV protests in the Second Life MMORPG, Hasta en Second Life marchan contra Hugo Chávez.
In Second Life, I am a fat, heavily armed, naked bearded lady.
What happens in Second Life matters why, again?
See also Tupi Takes His Own Second Life!
Screenshot from Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Oh, come all ye faithful! Joyful and triumphant! Grand Theft Auto meets the Prince of Peace in the battle for Life 2.0.
The New Market Machines 