Study finds ABC, CBS, NBC barely cover left-wing catastrophe, avoid word 'socialism'
By Kathryn
Blackhurst
Out of approximately 50,000 total evening news stories on
ABC, CBS and NBC combined in the last four years, just 25 have covered the
ongoing crisis in socialist Venezuela, according to a Media Research Center
study published Tuesday.
After Venezuela’s former socialist president, Hugo
Chávez, passed away in March 2013, the country has spiraled into economic
disaster and civil chaos. So far in 2017, more than 50 Venezuelans have been
killed during protests against current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and
his socialist policies.
Many Venezuelans are starving due to shortages of food
and other essentials. The country’s inflation rate is set to surpass 700
percent and 25 percent of Venezuelans will be unemployed.
“Yet the Big Three
evening newscasts have tried to pretend this crisis does not exist, offering
virtually no coverage as the situation has deteriorated over the past four
years,” MRC Research Analyst Mike
Ciandella wrote.
“The networks have also
been reluctant to attach the ‘socialist’ label to Venezuela’s government, and
have utterly failed to criticize liberal politicians and celebrities who have
praised the Chávez and Maduro regimes,” Ciandella added.
Indeed, out of the
50,000 total evening news stories on the three networks, just 25 covered
Venezuela, and only seven mentioned “socialism.” In addition, NBC Nightly News
only broadcast 13 stories spanning 16 minutes and 54 seconds, ABC’s World News
only covered 8 minutes and 34 seconds over seven stories, and CBS
Evening News only offered 3 minutes and 11 seconds over five stories.
“The network evening
news programs seem allergic to reporting on the ongoing crisis in Venezuela,”
Ciandella told LifeZette in an email. “Even worse, the few times they have
managed to cover the widespread poverty, starvation and government oppression
in that country, they somehow find ways to do that without mentioning the
word ‘socialism.'”
Ciandella noted that the
three networks aired no stories when Maduro took advantage of a countrywide
power outage to stamp out as much opposition as he could in September 2013.
When Maduro used the powers he gave himself to rule the country in a state of
“emergency” that superseded the National Assembly’s voice, the media networks
were silent.
After the
anti-socialists elected a majority to the National Assembly in December 2015
and Maduro’s loyalist Supreme Court decided to strip the Assembly of its power
on May 18, the media yawned.
On occasion, one of the
three major news networks will drop a rare mention of the word “socialism” in
connection with the Venezuela crisis in its coverage. As MRC noted, one of
those exceptions was correspondent Jacob Rascon on April 20’s NBC Nightly
News.
“The Venezuelan economy
has been in freefall for years … protesters blamed President Nicolas Maduro and
his socialist government,” Rascon said.
CBS Evening News anchor
Scott Pelley offered another exception on May 4, when he said, “Running battles
continue in Venezuela’s capital. They broke out a month ago when the socialist
president tried to grab more power. At least 37 have been killed.”
But all too often, the
media turn a blind eye to the atrocities and tragedies that fester in
Venezuela, along with the root causes underlying them.
"In fact, ABC's
'World News Tonight' hasn't mentioned the words 'socialism' or 'socialist' in
connection with Venezuela even once since Chávez's death in 2013,"
Ciandella told LifeZette. "This is completely inexcusable. The networks
seem intent on distancing the socialism of the Chávez and Maduro regimes with
the idealistic socialism of Bernie Sanders and liberal academia."
"I often say only
half-jokingly to students on college campuses who are all in with Bernie
Sanders that if they think socialism is such a wonderful economic model: How
about a one-way ticket to Caracas?" Stephen Moore, an economic policy
analyst and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, wrote of
Venezuela's capitol in a Washington
Times op-ed published May 21.
"You'd be a fool to
go there today. Venezuela is a human-rights crisis of epic proportions, with
mass hunger, mass poverty, despair, ghetto upon ghetto, and a mass exodus of
private businesses and anyone with money," Moore added.
"The burgeoning
resistance throws Molotov cocktails, rocks, and even human feces at the
security forces during the nonstop rioting. 'I don't fear death because this
life is crap,' one protester told the WSJ," Moore added. "It turns out
that 'share the wealth' eventually means there is no wealth, and the
egalitarian dream means everyone becomes equally poor. Venezuela is on its way
to becoming the next North Korea."
