Wednesday, May 8, 2019

CNN and Its Fake Venezuela Narrative

Thanks to the web archive at the Wayback Machine which never forgets what appears on the internet, we have a prime example of how the American mainstream media lies to its consumers in a desperate attempt to get them to believe whatever narrative they are promoting, in this case, the narrative that is being fed to American voters about the situation in Venezuela.

This story appeared on CNN this past weekend where it resided throughout Sunday May 5th, 2019 through to 11:09 am EST on Monday May 6th  when it was altered:


You will note that the story, written by two of CNN's senior writers, Jeanne Bonner and Jackie Castillo who actually is an Emmy Award wining journalist, states that:

"....pressure is mounting on Maduro to step down following elections in January in which voters chose Juan Guaido over him for president."

In fact, there was no presidential election in Venezuela in January 2019.  The last presidential vote  in Venezuela was held on May 20, 2018 and was boycotted by the opposition, facts that can be very easily confirmed using Google had the two "journalists" actually cared to provide their readers with the facts rather than the anti-Maduro/pro-Guaido narrative.  While the Lima Group of Latin American nations plus Canada stated that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the election, Nicolas Maduro actually did win 67.7 percent of the votes cast (a total of 6,190,612 votes), giving him a second term in office after he won his first term in 2013.  His opponents in May 2018 and the number of votes that each received were as follows:

Henri Falcon - 1,917,036 votes
Javier Bertucci Carrero - 988,761 votes
Reinado Jose Quijada - 36,246 votes

Even though voter turnout was very low by historical standards as shown on this graphic:


...we do know one thing for certain; despite what CNN may say, Juan Guaido did NOT run in Venezuela's 2018 presidential election.

By the way, this is what CNN's coverage of the Venezuelan military helicopter crash looked like after it realized that its coverage was wrong:


In this version of CNN's reality, Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January.

We certainly do live in a fake news world.  CNN should be ashamed...but I rather doubt that they are.  Caveat emptor.

1 comment:

  1. The idea of having a press that is free to cover the news is generally linked to the idea they will be fair because such a freedom generally comes with a degree of responsibility. In many ways, the media has become viewed more as a tool of the establishment than the protector of the people and defender of our rights. More on this subject in the article below.

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