Social Democracy Now

ABOVE: President Kirchner of Argentina: the next Hitler? The New York Times would like you to think so!

Somewhere in the offices of the editors of the New York Times there simply have to be dozens of well-thumbed copies of an instruction manual prescribing how to avoid attributing the left with any successes or any genuine support. If there is such a manual - and who could doubt that there is? - one of the rules laid down in it must read along the following lines:

'Whenever a story concerns a leftwing or left-leaning head of government who is extremely popular, treat the story as an opportunity to create the impression that he's out of control and behaving like a dictator, if not actually aspiring towards dictatorship.'

To my knowledge, the first time this 'rule' was applied was in the late 1940s, when the President of Argentina, Juan Perón, was widely stigmatized as a dictator in the U.S. media. I was myself under the impression that Perón had been a dictator until recently, when I learned that he had actually won the presidency in two elections (1946 and 1951), both times with decisive majorities (56% and 64% respectively). Whatever you think of his policies, Perón was the country's elected head of state, not a dictator.

What prompted the use of the term 'dictator' to demonize Perón was actually not dictatorship - after all, the U.S. has maintained cosy relations with many rightwing dictators over the decades - but his economic nationalism, which was manifested in July 1948 when 'Perón paid off Argentina's entire foreign debt and issued a “Declaration of National Independence.” During the next two years he would nationalize British-owned railways and assume control of the international marketing of Argentina's beef exports.' (SOURCE)

In recent years, the 'rule' has been applied to another Latin American economic nationalist, President Chavez of Venezuela. When in 2002, the U.S. government supported a military coup that briefly overthrew the democratically-elected Venezuelan president, the NYT found itself in the awkward position of having to place a favourable spin on the story of the overthrow of a democratically-elected, genuinely popular leader and his replacement by a dictator chosen by the military. Somehow the NYT made it sound as if the rise of dictatorship had represented a victory over dictatorship:

'When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in the custody of military coup leaders and apparently bound either for execution or exile, the Times hailed his overthrow in the lead editorial of its April 13 edition. “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator,” the paper exulted, noting that “the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader.”' (SOURCE)

The sheer effrontery of this kind of reporting cannot be overlooked: the overthrow of a democratically-elected, genuinely popular leader was celebrated on the grounds that he was allegedly a 'would-be dictator,' even though his demise involved his replacement by an actual dictator, Pedro Carmona. After all, it was Carmona - not Chavez - who 'nullified Venezuela’s constitution and dissolved their Supreme Court and their elected National Assembly.' (SOURCE) Carmona's usurpation was presumably rendered palatable because 1) he was a 'respected business leader' rather than a military man and 2) he was 'handed' power rather than took it for himself. (The NYT seems to presume that 'respected business leaders' are not real dictators.)

Why does the NYT indulge in such obvious twaddle? The answer is that how the NYT treats a story sets the tone for much of the media across the nation. As Michael I. Niman points out, 'The Chicago Tribune, like hundreds of other American newspapers, quickly followed The Times’ lead, writing on April 14th, that Chavez was just an “elected strongman,” arguing that sometimes countries “benefit from the military’s intervention to force out an elected president.” Long Island’s Newsday, goose-stepping right along the merry path to fascism, oxymoronically wrote that the coup was “an affirmation of the democratic process.” (SOURCE)

Although Gail Collins of the NYT editorial board subsequently apologized for this appalling editorial, the rhetoric of what I can only refer to as 'would-be dictatorship' has never gone away. In fact, the rhetoric of Chavez's alleged slide into dictatorship was applied most liberally after pro-Chavez candidates won all 167 seats in the National Assembly at the December 2005 elections, meaning that Chavez now controls 68% of the seats in the country's national assembly. But instead of acknowledging that the Chavez sweep proves how very popular his policies are, American newspapers including the NYT chose to report it in terms of the hypothetical dangers of excessive popularity - dangers which, it must be said, have about as little chance of manifesting themselves as Saddam Hussein's WMD.

We return to Argentina for the latest victim of the application of this maxim from the NYT's editorial rulebook, President Nestor Kirchner. I refer to the story "Dwindling Debt Boosts Argentine Leader" by Larry Rohter. This article contains old news - that Argentina has paid off its loans to the IMF and intends to have nothing further to do with this organization. I had read this story well before Christmas (on Bloomberg.com on December 15), so I was inevitably a little surprised that the NYT failed to report it until January 3, 2006. However, the article itself does a great deal to explain why the NYT was so late running it (as it is late with so many other important stories). Here are the key passages:

'President Néstor Kirchner appears to be concentrating more power in his own hands.'

Kirchner is 'extend[ing] the hand of the state deeper into the economy, the judiciary and the news media.'

Kirchner 'now enjoys record levels of public support - 75 percent or more, according to recent polls - that allow him to do largely as he pleases.'

'In a report on what it called "indirect censorship," the Association for Civil Rights warned this month that "the current government has made control of national media content a priority that it pursues with systematic vigor, subjecting the media to a behind-the-scenes executive siege."'

Kirchner has a plan for 'greater control over judicial nominations.'

And, worst of all, the paragraph that concludes the article:

"What Kirchner likes is to be absolutely in charge, so he has become his own economy minister," said Joaquín Morales Solá, chief political columnist for the conservative daily La Nación. "Even more than moving left, there's a turn towards a personalistic style of governing, with a dose of authoritarianism and hegemony and an aggressive style of permanent rupture and confrontation."

Clearly, the NYT decided that it could not allow the IMF story to speak for itself; the news had to be withheld until a biased frame could be built around it. Instead of furnishing background on Argentina's disastrous relationship with the IMF, the story became a vehicle for a small collection of quotations disparaging the Argentine president.

Apparently, it's not acceptable to the NYT for left wing or left leaning politicians to acquire significant popular support. For as soon as they start behaving as though they possess the mandates that - as it happens - they actually do possess, the red lights start flashing, "Warning! Dictatorship ahead!"

It goes without saying that these warnings are only sounded when politics steers leftwards. If Kirchner was veering right instead of left we can be absolutely certain that the NYT would not have felt the need to hold back a story until it had solicited a sufficient number of derogatory comments about him. Does anyone think the NYT would frame a story on a rightward-moving Kirchner entirely with remarks from leftwing critics and wrap the article up with a damning quotation from a columnist for a leftwing daily? Not a chance in hell.

Rohter's story is therefore indicative of the fact that the NYT is no news-paper in the traditional sense, but a rightwing propaganda sheet which only publishes 'news' that has been incorporated into a biased frame.* That the NYT is often late reporting major stories these days shows that it is the framing that takes priority, not the news. No story gets run before the selected frame is cemented in place, so that the NYT regularly runs stories a week or more after they have appeared elsewhere. In this case, it took over two weeks - which suggests that they had an uphill battle eliciting the negative comments about Kirchner that they so obviously set out to muster.

The framing issue illustrates how irrelevant the NYT has become to today's burning political questions. For the real political problem today is not the quasi-dictatorial exercise of power by those commanding strong popular support - what does democracy mean if those who command high levels of popular support are not able to pursue the policies that made them so popular? - but the imposition of unpopular policies by leaders who enjoy wafer-thin majorities, if they enjoy majorities at all - in other words, people like Bush, Blair and Howard, who, inter alia, abused every weapon in their respective arsenals of distortion and mass deception to unleash the Iraq conflict.

A serious newspaper would, if it felt obliged to marry news with criticism, ask questions about how it can be that heads of state with as little support as those three individuals manage to get their own way, time after time; it would be warning not about the potential dangers of too much popularity but about the real and imminent dangers of the political malaise that results from the cynical manipulation of power by unscrupulous pro-big business, pro-Zionist politicians bent on advancing deeply unpopular agendas. It certainly would not waste words slandering politicians who enjoy solid support from those who elected them.

* On 'biased news frames' see "Framing Venezuela: the US Media's Anti-Chavez Bias" by Justin Delacour

BELOW: The real reason the NYT wants to demonize the Argentine president: IMF loans help keep countries with vast potential like Argentina down (SOURCE):



Economic growth is currently running at 9.7 percent in the new IMF-less Argentina.