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Add an EventVenezuela. Journalists' Slugfest: Al Giordano vs. Petkoff in Three Rounds. Vheadline.com
The interview with Al Giordano of NarcoNews.com referred to in the
vheadline.com article below as
"interview with another publication"
is the San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia interview here:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1552703.php
You may need to sign up for the free registration to see this vheadline.com
article below:
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=968
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----- vheadline.com article begins -----
| General News | |
Posted: Wednesday, January 08, 2003
By: VHeadline Reporters
Journalists' Slugfest: Giordano vs. Petkoff in Three Rounds
VHeadline.com has obtained the following email discourse:
- Parental advisory: One of these letters contains very strong adult language, which we have not edited.
On Tuesday, January 7, the Caracas tabloid daily newspaper TalCual published a story, by Edmundo Bracho complaining about Internet journalists, specifically focusing on a recent NarcoNews critique of freelance correspondent Phil Gunson.
What follows is a translation of the subsequent email exchange, in Spanish (with some off-color Spanglish on Petkoff's part) between Narco News publisher Al Giordano and TalCual editor Teodoro Petkoff.
Round One: Giordano wrote to Petkoff:
Mr. Petkoff,
Excuse my imperfect Spanish, but I think you'll understand what I tell you:
A thousand thanks for the free publicity given to our reports by your correspondent Edmundo Bracho, as dishonest as he is foolish. Bracho unintentionally confirmed for the world the yellow and lazy tendency of the commercial journalist class in Venezuela and in other countries. (Media Insults for Venezuela, TalCual, January 7, 2003).
Although my email address -- narconews@hotmail.com -- is published on the front page of Narco News http://www.narconews.com/ Bracho did not comply with his first duties as a journalist: To investigate and ask questions. If he had done a moment of investigation, Bracho might not be as easily discredited as he is today. Bracho made a grand show of complaining about Internet journalism, but he committed the same journalistic crimes that he said he was criticizing. His article is totally written "from his desk," without a single original word that would have resulted from his own investigation. Thus, it is understandable that he made so many errors:
1. Bracho says: :Narco News, one of the independent news services, with its headquarters in the U.S."
I haven't lived in the United States for five years. Not one of the journalists I employ lives in the U.S. We're all in Latin America.
2. Using (badly) my words in an interview with another publication, Bracho makes a grand spectacle about "Al Giordano, who defines himself as an true anarcho-syndicalist with a strong situationista (sic) tendency."
It's a small point but worth making: Why the use of (sic) for a word in Spanish -- "situacionista" -- when the word I used -- "Situationist" -- was in English?: As any student of the history of the 20th century knows very well, the Situationists were responsible for the large General Strike (an authentic general strike, not like this act of theater by the upper class in Venezuela today) in Paris in 1968. The Situationist International had among its outstanding members authors like Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, Michele Bernstein and Alexander Trocchi. Any Internet search for the word "Situationist" would reveal what the word means.
3. Bracho says: "He is also the person who credits himself with having denounced, in the US, from The Narco News Bulletin and IndyMedia, the coup d?etat of April 11th prior to and more extensively than traditional media."
In fact, as a veteran journalist, my work has been praised by many of the best journalists and newspapers in the world, including for -- in their words, not mine -- our work in April 2002. See: http://www.narconews.com/mediacritics1.html Additionally, I point you toward my post-April 11 report, in which I give credit to various journalists for breaking the information blockade: http://www.narconews.com/tresdias.html (Note: an English version of this story appears on VHeadline). Bracho complains of my supposed interest in the private life of the poor little naked simulator Phil Gunson. But don't you believe that a journalist has a duty to disclose his conflicts of interest? If a journalist uses his ex-girlfriend as his only source for a lie with consequences ... as Gunson did ... shouldn't he disclose his connection with that person in his text?
4. Bracho totally ignored another serious fact about Gunson reported in my same article: his undisclosed connection with the political consultant (and "gallo" of the butcher of 1989 Carlos Andres Perez), Erik Ekvall.
The lack of disclosure of these connections in the rest of the world ends journalistic careers. Is it only the Venezuela press that permits this lack of ethics? Does Tal Cual permit its reporters to not disclose when they write about their lovers or political consultants? See: http://www.narconews.com/mcfarrenstory1.html and http://www.narconews.com/mcfarrenstory2.html
The problem that Gunson has is not with his private life, but rather how he himself mixed his private life with his journalistic work without disclosing it. Thus, I'm not complaining at all. To the contrary, thank you for the attention. If one or two of your readers read the pages of Narco News after reading the stupidity of 'El Bobo Bracho,' then it has been a pleasure.
salud,
Alberto Giordano
director general
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@hotmail.com
Round Two: Petkoff's Reply:
You seem to me to be a perfect imbecile, a real asshole, a species of Hedda Hopper, a fan of gossip with a spirit of an inquisitor worthy of Joe Mac Carthy, ultra leftist but fascist at the core (the extremes touch each other). Take me off your mailing list and go give lections to your mother's cono (I hope you understand, you motherfucker).
Round Three: Giordano's reply to Petkoff (sent to VHeadline and others):
Dear Colleagues,
I just received this response from editor Ted Petkoff of TalCual in Venezuela, so dignified and revealing of the character of Mr. Petkoff and his yellow journal. I share it with you without editing it.
Petkoff writes me:
"usted me parece un perfecto imbecil, a real asshole, una especie de hedda
hopper, un aficionado a la chismografia y con un espiritu de inquisidor digno de
joe mac carthy. ultraizquierdista pero fascista en el fondo (los extremos se
tocan). saqueme de su correo y vaya a darle lecciones al cono de su madre (espero
que entienda, you motherfucker)."
Poor little Petkoff... It seems he is finally discovering that the authentic journalists of the world already don't take him seriously, nor his corrupt and interested "newspaper." We all know of his lack of ethics. But what is really new is his obsession with my mom!
And what, Petkoff? The results of your "strike" -- your second attempt at a coup d'etat in a year -- haven't put you in a good mood?
Kisses, Teddy,
Alberto
narconews@hotmail.com
----end of vheadline.com article---
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Venezuela news. Some sites (such as NarcoNews and San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia) are indexed daily by Google News. Click the "News" tab in the results page.
|
Choose news site:
NarcoNews.com
The web.
alainet.org (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French).
thegully.com (English).
Venezuela's Electronic News. vheadline.com
ZNet. zmag.org (English, Spanish).
San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. sf.indymedia.org
Latin American Energy, Oil & Gas. PetroleumWorld.com
aporrea.org (in Spanish).
einnews.com (Must pay monthly fee).
Enter more search terms. Put quotes around phrases: |
Some Venezuela news sources. For the
absolute very latest news click the main site links below.
http://alainet.org (English, Spanish,
Portuguese, French).
http://alainet.org/venezuela.phtml
http://www.thegully.com/essays/venezuela/021220_media_mindshock.html
See links to mid-left of page.
http://www.narconews.com (English,
Spanish).
http://www.vheadline.com (English).
http://www.zmag.org/venezuela_watch.htm
(English).
http://www.petroleumworld.com
(English, Spanish).
http://www.aporrea.org (in Spanish).
http://www.einnews.com/venezuela
(English) Must pay monthly fee.
http://www.indybay.org (English,
Spanish) Use search engine there to find Venezuela articles and many
comments.
Venezuela's oil coup-strike-lockout for the rich.
In 1974 80% of oil income went to the state. Today 80% of Venezuelan oil income goes to the rich, and to "operating costs." Only 20% goes to the state.
Chavez reforms will help reverse this in January 2003. This is why the
coup-plotters are in such a hurry to overthrow the fairly-ELECTED Chavez
government, to prevent these reforms, and to reverse others already-implemented.
Reforms that help the poor and lower middle class.
Massive corporate-media disinformation, destabilization campaign going on inside Venezuela.
Support President Chavez! Search Form,
search shortcuts, and compilation of Venezuela news excerpts.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1555816.php
Older version. Comments include latest Venezuela news sites, search
shortcuts.
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/25083.php
--Later version with more excerpts from articles.
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Media War.
"They also control the media. All of Venezuela's private television stations and national newspapers are owned by the opposition, and all are employed to deliver an unadulterated flow of anti-Chávez propaganda in the form of news, popular music, even soap operas. The distortions can be dramatic. Today's anti-Chávez march is covered by all four TV channels from five in the morning until midnight. The pro-Chávez march three days later -- though twice as large -- is ignored entirely by three of the channels, and covered only sporadically by the fourth. (The American media also played up the anti-Chávez march, inflating its turnout to a million.)"
-- Barry C. Lynn. Mother Jones article. January/February 2003 Issue.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/02/ma_208_01.html
The April 2002 coup by media.
"The conspirators, including Carmona, met at the offices of Venevisión. They stayed until 2am to prepare "the next stage", along with Rafael Poleo (owner of El Nuevo Pais) and Gustavo Cisneros, a key figure in the coup. Cisneros, a multimillionaire of Cuban origin and the owner of Venevisión, runs a media empire - Organización Diego Cisneros. It has 70 outlets in 39 countries (9). Cisneros is a friend of George Bush senior: they play golf together and in 2001 the former US president holidayed in Cisneros's Venezuelan property. Both are keen on the privatisation [theft] of the PDVSA [Venezuelan oil company] (10). Otto Reich, US assistant secretary of state for Interamerican affairs, admits to having spoken with Cisneros that night (11). At 4am on 12 April [2002], to avoid bloodshed, Chávez allowed himself to be arrested and taken to the distant island of Orchila."
-- Maurice Lemoine. Le Monde Diplomatique. August 2002.
http://mondediplo.com/2002/08/10venezuela and
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1551768.php and
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=2321
"After the shooting began, authorities of the government of President Hugo Chávez immediately apprehended some of the rooftop snipers who had lit the fuse to the violence. But after Chávez himself was placed into custody later that day by military generals, the rooftop assassins, whose identities are still unknown, were incredulously set free by the dictatorship of Pedro Carmona - and this tells us everything about which side hired those snipers - as the dictator-for-a-day Carmona simultaneously abolished the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution. For a more detailed history of these events, in which the Venezuelan people overthrew the U.S.-sponsored dictatorship within three days and changed the history of our América, see "Three Days that Shook the Media," (Narco News, April 18, 2002: http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html ).
-------------------------- Al Giordano of NarcoNews.com - Summer 2002.
http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html
Venezuela opposition, state waging battle through media.
Caracas, Dec 21 2002. AP
http://www.petroleumworld.com/story0048.htm
[Excerpt begins]
In recent days, seven national private TV channels repeatedly have broadcast slickly produced ads blaming Chavez for everything from street crime to gasoline shortages. The gas problem stems from the TV-supported strike.
"We will not give up the fight, we won't give up until he resigns," one ad drones on Venevision.
"Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" states another, paid for by the Democratic Coordinator opposition umbrella group and repeatedly broadcast on the Globovision 24-hour news network.
Yet another ad, titled "History of a Failure," shows clips of dirty street kids, long unemployment lines and acts of political violence. A voiceover repeatedly accuses Chavez of "Failure! Failure!"
Commercials for Christmas gifts have been replaced by political propaganda since the strike began Dec. 2. Normal programming - soap operas, cartoons, sitcoms - has been swapped for near-constant news coverage and marathon talk shows with opposition politicians.
[Excerpt ends]
------------------
Associated Press. Centralized propaganda.
[Excerpt begins]
"Associated Press (AP) is a 'non-profit' company run by the AP Managing Editors Association; your local managing editor or news director is technically the boss, and therefore responsible for the errors and distortions of fact that have plagued AP's coverage from Venezuela and other lands.
"But there's zero accountability at AP. 'The AP is unaccountable to its millions of readers,' notes Feder. 'Unlike at many newspapers, there is no AP ombudsman who 'speaks for the readers.' There is no letters page for the AP, and individual newspapers rarely print letters responding to wire stories.'
"And it's only going to stop when your local managing editors and news directors find the backbone to send inaccurate stories back to AP - like they would with one of their own reporters - and insist on a rewrite."
-- Al Giordano. NarcoNews. Dec 18 2002 email to his Yahoo Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews/message/478 --Many more details at links below:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article567.html and
http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2775
By Ricarado Hausmann
Published: January 7 2003 20:23
Venezuelans used to take uneventful politics for granted. No more. They now march in unprecedented numbers against a president - Hugo Chávez - who is unable to keep things running. A six-week general strike has shut down much of the economy, including the oil industry. The crisis now competes with Iraq and North Korea for space on the front pages.
The decline in oil production has raised world prices and disrupted the supply of petrol in the Americas. Fiscal solvency has evaporated, raising the spectre of a default on Brady bonds and a crisis in the mostly foreign-owned banking system. What is fuelling the passions behind the protests?
The Venezuelan story has three main ingredients: poorly diagnosed bad economic performance; the perils of constitutional reform; and the totalitarian implications of revolutionary ideals.
After being the fastest-growing economy on record between 1920 and 1980, Venezuela experienced an extraordinary reversal of fortune in the following two decades, with income per capita falling by half. Disappointed with their lot, Venezuelans voted for a candidate who blamed corruption and privilege - not lack of growth - for their miseries and who offered a political agenda centred on constitutional reform. Since Mr Chávez took power four years ago, income per capita has fallen by another 20 per cent, in spite of high oil prices.
The constitutional reform approved in 1999 did away with a 40-year-old constitution that had generated enough political stability to ensure the transfer of power to nine elected presidents, seven of them running from the opposition. Enough checks and balances were put into the system and sufficient institutional space was created for political parties so that all constituencies found it in their interest to play by the rules and to search for consensus.
The new constitution, through design and circumstance, ended up concentrating power in the presidency and eliminating most checks and balances. It was drafted by a constituent assembly elected through a rule that gave Mr Chávez 92 per cent of the seats with just over 50 per cent of the vote, essentially disenfranchising the opposition. This winner-take-all assembly dissolved the elected Congress and appointed loyal supporters to the Supreme Court, the attorney-general and the comptroller-general without following constitutional procedures. In addition, the new constitution extended the presidential period, allowed for a one-time re-election and substituted a two-chamber congress with a one-chamber national assembly, in order to lessen the burden of consensus-building. This concentration of power has allowed the government to get away with murder, misuse public funds, arm violent gangs and disarm opposition local police.
Last, Mr Chávez's revolutionary ideology, for all its romanticism, inevitably involves a totalitarian system of values that is inconsistent with an open society. According to him, inherited institutions and organisations are a priori bad, income is a sign of corruption, merit a sign of privilege. Stealing is fine if you are poor. Consensus-building is a sign of weakness.
These ideas rub most Venezuelans the wrong way. After all, the country exhibits the highest social and political mobility in the hemisphere. The middle classes find that their dwindling incomes are well deserved, a product of the dramatic rise in educational attainment over the past generation. They feel that a society that does not reward effort, recognise excellence and punish crime is bound to become chaotic. But these values are eroded by the president in his interminable speeches.
To regain governability, the country must return to a political representation that expresses society's wishes and checks and balances to force consensus and limit abuse. This can be achieved only by new elections and reappointing the Supreme Court, attorney-general and comptroller-general. This would require constitut- ional reform or a constituent assembly.
The government has opposed this because it fears losing its power and impunity. The opposition, meanwhile, thinks it can impose it without negotiations. The deadlock is costing all dearly. The international community instead of just facilitating dialogue, as has been the case, should put its force behind a quick electoral solution.
The writer is professor of the practice of economic development at Harvard University. He was minister of planning in Venezuela
Source: http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1039524265782&p=1012571727126
The last sentence in the article above explains everything as to how a single article can be so full of disinformation.
For the truth check out the links and search form below. Found some more Venezuela news sources.
Google-Search Venezuela news sites. Some sites (such as MotherJones.com, NarcoNews.com, Guardian.co.uk, CommonDreams.org, and San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia) are indexed daily by Google News. Click the "News" tab in the Google search results page. Then click "Sort by date." Some sites (such as Vheadline.com) have search engines onsite that index daily.
Enter more search terms. Put quotes around phrases:
Venezuela news sources. For the latest news click the links below. If needed, use onsite search engines.
http://www.motherjones.com (English). Onsite search. Some URLs indicate year and month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk (English). Onsite search results have dates, and latest info is on top.
http://www.alainet.org (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French).
http://www.alainet.org/venezuela.phtml (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French). Venezuela page.
http://www.thegully.com/essays/venezuela/021220_media_mindshock.html See links to mid-left of page.
http://www.narconews.com (English, Spanish).
http://www.vheadline.com (English). "Venezuela's Electronic News."
http://www.zmag.org/venezuela_watch.htm (English). Venezuela articles page.
http://www.flashpoints.net (English). KPFA Flashpoints Radio. Text, photos, audio.
http://www.petroleumworld.com (English, Spanish).
http://www.aporrea.org (Spanish). Venezuela news.
http://www.americas.org/venezuela (English). Up-to-date Venezuela news links.
http://www.commondreams.org (English). Use onsite search for daily indexing. URL indicates exact date.
http://www.einnews.com/venezuela (English). Must pay monthly fee.
http://italy.indymedia.org/features/guerreglobali/#395 (Italian). Venezuela news link compilation.
http://belgium.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=44547 (English, French, Dutch). Link compilation.
http://sf.indymedia.org (English, Spanish) Onsite search engine returns many Venezuela articles and comments.