The MSM on Bolivia
MSNBC Coverage of Bolivian Coup
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bolivian-president-announces-resignation-amid-accusations-election-fraud-n1079561
Many will consider MSNBC a left wing news channel that one should approach with hesitance. This narrative, however, is very problematic. In considering MSNBC a channel that's too critical of power and far too left, one will immediately laugh off anything to the left of MSNBC. The mainstream media likes to be considered leftist, as this keeps them from being attacked from the left in mainstream discourse, which is a bad look as they don't want to seem too supportive of power, it keeps people from going further left as they hold the standard, and it covers up the fact that they are necessarily center, center-right, or right wing. The corporate wing of the democratic party MSNBC mainly supports is certainly not left-wing. But, they can't be left-wing out of necessity as they are profit seeking corporations themselves that are bound by shareholders, and the buyers of their product are other corporations. The media airing left-wing takes would be like trying to sell somebody a car that say's "I'm a jackass" on the side of it. Advertisers, their customers, will not buy airtime on something promoting genuine leftism, and you won't find a genuine leftist news organization that has advertisers. A public corporations only interest, by law and bound by shareholders, is to accumulate capital. Truly left wing movements call for things such as nationalization, labour control of the means of productions, distribution of wealth through taxation, and the abolishment of imperialism. All of these things attack the current political structure that is built for increasing profits for owners. You can see this now in how mainstream media covers Bernie Sanders, someone who is trying to distribute power to the working-class, and you see this in how the respond to US imperialism. I will look at an article about the recent coup against Evo Morales.
To start, they call Evo's leaving of office a resignation. This downplays the fact that Evo was forced out of office by the military, and him needing to seek asylum after leaving office due to threats of an illegal arrests is good evidence that this was more than a reluctant resignation. It seems they are doing this to avoid calling it a coup. A coup is "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government." Which, is exactly what happened. Even if you support the coup, it's still a coup. They mainly cite the talk and beliefs of the opposition in the article as you go through it, and largely omit the concerns of pro-Evo supporters. They omit the fact that the OAS report could very well be false, as their is contrary evidence from a 20 page study done from the CERP (1) and OAS was founded in the cold-war era to protect US interests. Evo also offered to do a revote with different supervision, which is not something a president who hates democracy would do. People mainly are talking about the irregularities in the election, but I would be surprised if there weren't some irregularities in a poor countries voting. It still could be that the election was faulty, but we don't have good evidence of that. They omit the fact the opposition leaders are largely right-wing and racist. There were military officers cutting the indigenous flag off their uniform, Jeanine Anez waving the bible around(after article), Camacho saying "Bolivia belongs to christ"(2). All this is meant to be an attack on the indigenous people of Bolivia. They omit the fact that their were also large groups of pro-Evo protesters, and not just masses of people upset with him. They omit the fact that the CIA has been involved in basically every latin American democratic coup, and their were NGO's providing funding for the right-wing opposition. The list of omissions, and poor framings can go on. A recent Jacobin article dives into it better than I can - https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/bolivia-evo-morales-coup-media.
(1) http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/no-evidence-that-bolivian-election-results-were-affected-by-irregularities-or-fraud-statistical-analysis-shows
(2) https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bolivian-president-announces-resignation-amid-accusations-election-fraud-n1079561
Many will consider MSNBC a left wing news channel that one should approach with hesitance. This narrative, however, is very problematic. In considering MSNBC a channel that's too critical of power and far too left, one will immediately laugh off anything to the left of MSNBC. The mainstream media likes to be considered leftist, as this keeps them from being attacked from the left in mainstream discourse, which is a bad look as they don't want to seem too supportive of power, it keeps people from going further left as they hold the standard, and it covers up the fact that they are necessarily center, center-right, or right wing. The corporate wing of the democratic party MSNBC mainly supports is certainly not left-wing. But, they can't be left-wing out of necessity as they are profit seeking corporations themselves that are bound by shareholders, and the buyers of their product are other corporations. The media airing left-wing takes would be like trying to sell somebody a car that say's "I'm a jackass" on the side of it. Advertisers, their customers, will not buy airtime on something promoting genuine leftism, and you won't find a genuine leftist news organization that has advertisers. A public corporations only interest, by law and bound by shareholders, is to accumulate capital. Truly left wing movements call for things such as nationalization, labour control of the means of productions, distribution of wealth through taxation, and the abolishment of imperialism. All of these things attack the current political structure that is built for increasing profits for owners. You can see this now in how mainstream media covers Bernie Sanders, someone who is trying to distribute power to the working-class, and you see this in how the respond to US imperialism. I will look at an article about the recent coup against Evo Morales.
To start, they call Evo's leaving of office a resignation. This downplays the fact that Evo was forced out of office by the military, and him needing to seek asylum after leaving office due to threats of an illegal arrests is good evidence that this was more than a reluctant resignation. It seems they are doing this to avoid calling it a coup. A coup is "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government." Which, is exactly what happened. Even if you support the coup, it's still a coup. They mainly cite the talk and beliefs of the opposition in the article as you go through it, and largely omit the concerns of pro-Evo supporters. They omit the fact that the OAS report could very well be false, as their is contrary evidence from a 20 page study done from the CERP (1) and OAS was founded in the cold-war era to protect US interests. Evo also offered to do a revote with different supervision, which is not something a president who hates democracy would do. People mainly are talking about the irregularities in the election, but I would be surprised if there weren't some irregularities in a poor countries voting. It still could be that the election was faulty, but we don't have good evidence of that. They omit the fact the opposition leaders are largely right-wing and racist. There were military officers cutting the indigenous flag off their uniform, Jeanine Anez waving the bible around(after article), Camacho saying "Bolivia belongs to christ"(2). All this is meant to be an attack on the indigenous people of Bolivia. They omit the fact that their were also large groups of pro-Evo protesters, and not just masses of people upset with him. They omit the fact that the CIA has been involved in basically every latin American democratic coup, and their were NGO's providing funding for the right-wing opposition. The list of omissions, and poor framings can go on. A recent Jacobin article dives into it better than I can - https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/bolivia-evo-morales-coup-media.
(1) http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/no-evidence-that-bolivian-election-results-were-affected-by-irregularities-or-fraud-statistical-analysis-shows
(2) https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/
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