Views on Venezuela

I saw (via Guest Who) a couple of critical comments about this morning's Today:

They were tweeting about Justin Webb's introduction to the 8.10 feature on the refugee crisis in and around Venezuela:

Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia. It should be very rich. It was very rich, the richest economy in South America. Under its long-time leader Hugo Chavez it used its wealth to reduce inequality and improve the lives of the poorest citizens, but when Chavez died and the oil price tanked Venezuela changed. The new leader President Maduro has steered his nation into what can only be described as a catastrophe - a humanitarian disaster in which children are starving, hyperinflation is among the worst the world has ever seen and people are trying desperately to leave. 

Here's an alternative view: Due to vast overspending on welfare programs and the fixing of prices under Hugo Chavez, and the nationalisation and then abandonment of farmland, and the fact that the late president made the country dependent on selling its oil abroad, when it all came crashing down under his incompetent successor it surely only fell so disastrously because Mr. Chavez had already turned the Venezuelan economy into one huge house of cards.

That's a point of view. So is what Justin Webb said (or read out). And both are controversial, given their relevance to a major political party here in the UK. 

Phoning it in

Listening to John Simpson on Today yesterday and then reading a newspaper article published the day before led me to a disturbing thought: that JS simply read an article in the Guardian by a far-left academic and then regurgitated it pretty much wholesale to Nick Robinson on Today the following morning, passing it off as his own insight. 

Please read the article for yourselves and then read the Today transcript (below). The echoes are uncanny, aren't they? 

One of the things that stood out for me was the way JS talked about the "right wing" street protests, echoing the Guardian writer's heavy use of that term. I decided to check up on the two leading opposition figures in the protest, Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez. Mr Ledezma has a long history of involvement with the Venezuelan centre-left and Mr Lopez also has a long history of involvement with the Venezuelan centre-left. Now, I'd expect (alas) a far-left academic writing in the Guardian to smear the Venezuelan opposition as 'right-wing' or 'far-right', but not for the BBC's World Affairs Editor to play that same game. 

And when JS said he read an opinion poll just the other day, I can guess exactly where he was "looking" at it: in the Guardian. I've Googled around and found nowhere else that's reporting that poll other than that piece in the Guardian. 

The one bit that JS brought fresh to the party was the bit about the European settler elite sitting on top of "an indigenous population", and that's the bit that flies in the face of one of the things I remember reading about Venezuela - that it's not like Bolivia and only has a very tiny indigenous population, something a bit of Googling confirms: 

So was the great John Simpson 'winging it' here? I think so.

Nick Robinson: Listening to that our World Affairs Editor John Simpson, who joins us on the line. Morning to you, John. Take us back, if you will, to the roots of Hugo Chavez and the movement which inspired many people in the West.

John Simpson: Well, Venezuela labours under two curses years - I mean things that could actually be in its favour but have turned out not to be. One is oil - we've been listening to that - but the other is the whole basis of the country, the way in which a settler culture, European culture, was based on top of than an indigenous population. And although there's been plenty of inter-mixture and so forth, nevertheless there is still that difference. When Maduro, the president, talks about a class war he is he's right to some extent, because the class is based on that ethnic difference as well as on economic difference, and that's cursed Venezuela. And what's even worse about it in a sense is that it's kind of half and half, Nick. I was looking at an opinion poll just the other day. 51% say they support the street protests of the of the right wing and 44% say they don't. It's so close that it's bound to cause real, serious problems.

Nick Robinson: And it's not just the country itself that is deeply divided, is it, it's the attitude to it from outside, depending on whether you're a supporter of or deeply suspicious of the United States?

John Simpson: That is also true, and people who are deeply suspicious of the United States, which after all has an appalling record in its own backyard, Central and South America. It, nevertheless, is a fact that deep but that there's a clear separation between the governments - what you might call Western countries, that's pro-Western countries. All the main countries in Latin America now disapprove of the Maduro government and what it's doing, the EU disapproves, Canada and the United States disapprove - and other countries that don't come out and support Maduro in any sense but feel a real sympathy, and lots of individuals, of course, right across the western world.

Radical chic at 'Newsnight'

For those of you who love a good foreign news story (all five of you)...

Ken Livingstone, Owen Jones & Co. used to love Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and his socialist 'revolution'. Chavez died a year or so ago, and things haven't gone too well since. 

Until this week Newsnight had failed to report the large-scale anti-government demonstrations against Hugo Chavez's increasingly authoritarian successor, President Nicolás Maduro. 

As you probably know, left-wing Maduro won the last election by a whisker (and, very possibly, with a little help from electoral fraud) but since then his popularity (such as it was) has plummeted, with only 37% now supporting him (according to the latest polls), and the political violence in Venezuela has subsequently escalated, along with the government repression...a dramatic story for Newsnight to cover.

Having read comments at B-BBC (and other sites, including Is the BBC biased?) accusing the BBC of being - in the manner of people everywhere who are instinctively drawn to 'radical chic' - pro-Chavismo, and accusing them of largely ignoring the present upheaval in Venezuela, I was intrigued to see that Newsnight was reporting from Venezuela this week (on Wednesday's edition of the programme) - for the first time in ages. 

Would this Newsnight report refute such charges?

The short answer to that is, "No!" - despite Jeremy Paxman's introduction.

The report from Olly Lambert (above) - Newsnight's new 'filmmaker in residence'.....previously responsible for such efforts as Syria: Across the Lines, The Tea Boy of Gaza ["Award-winning documentary portraying life in the Gaza Strip before and during the Israeli re-occupation of 2006. This is the story of Mahmoud, a 12- year old boy who supports his family by selling tea in Gaza’s biggest hospital"] and My Child the Rioter.....focused on a high-rise slum in Caracas where a squatters' cooperative has been formed. He showed how lives have been transformed there for the very-much better.

It was a feel-good piece, rather 'magic realist' in character (in the manner, perhaps, of the late leftist Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez.) 

The film, subtitled and without a voice-over, was beautifully-shot, art-house-style.

In it three engaging characters - the President of the Residents' Cooperative, a single mum and a female grocer - expressed their joy at what has happened. 

All three praised the Maduro government for helping bring their miracle about. 

The President of the Residents' Cooperative and the female grocer also denounced the opposition, and expressed their fears that an opposition government would take their miracle away from them. (Ominous music as images of the opposition marching reinforced that message).

The female grocer said, "We support the government and our President, just like we did with Chavez". The President of the Residents' Cooperative denounced the anti-government demonstators as wealthy non-Venezuelans working "for foreign interests". The single mum felt sympathy for Nicolás Maduro. ("Running this building is hard enough. I imagine running this country must be even harder".)

All utterly one-sided, of course so, yes, Newsnight's first take on this story then has been to take the 'radical chic', Guardianista approach - i.e. to give us only the pro-Chavismo point of view, and to do so in the most sympathetic terms imaginable. [I very much doubt that Cuba's state news agency Prensa Latina could have been more sympathetic. Please watch it and see if you disagree.]

Will Newsnight redress the balance in the coming weeks? A beautifully arty film chronicling the struggles of young, likeable opposition students against the oppressive Maduro regime perhaps?