Colombia and Venezuela: Testing the Propaganda Model

By Kevin Young

Media Accuracy on Latin America (MALA)

December 19, 2008

U.S. news coverage of parallel political events in Colombia and Venezuela offers an opportunity to test the usefulness of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model,” developed in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon, reissued 2002). The model predicts that the news media will look favorably upon the Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally, while consistently vilifying the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez, whom the U.S. government frequently identifies as an antagonist. If the model holds, U.S. media outlets will be found to portray the Uribe government as relatively democratic, progressive, and peaceful, while casting the Chávez government as authoritarian, regressive, and militaristic.

Restricting the comparison to the two leading liberal U.S. newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, this prediction is testable using two sets of similar events revolving around issues of political freedom and democracy:

1. Freedom of speech and the press. In October 2004 the Uribe government closed down Inravisión, a public broadcaster analogous to PBS, calling it “inefficient.” The station, which often broadcasted reportage critical of the Colombian government, was home to a strong labor union. Three years later, the Chávez government declined to renew the public broadcasting license of RCTV, a privately owned Venezuelan network critical of Chávez policies that had supported a brief military coup against Chávez in 2002. RCTV returned to the airwaves seven weeks later via cable and satellite.

2. Presidential term limits. Between 2004 and 2007, both Chávez and Uribe attempted to extend or abolish presidential term limits in their respective countries; Uribe was successful, Chávez was not. Their proposals differed in three respects: first, Chávez included his request within a larger package of social, economic, and political reforms, whereas Uribe did not; second, the Chávez proposal and reforms were defeated by a popular referendum, whereas Uribe’s request was granted by the Colombian Congress and upheld by a Supreme Court ruling; and third, Chávez proposed to eliminate term limits entirely, whereas Uribe proposed to extend them. Nonetheless, both were proposals to expand executive power.

If the propaganda model holds, U.S. newspaper reports and editorials will express outrage over Chávez’s actions while ignoring, justifying, or endorsing Uribe’s...

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