[R-G] FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington's Needs

[Anthony Fenton]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Isabel Macdonald
FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
212-633-6700 x 310
imacdonald at fair.org
FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington's Needs

FEBRUARY 2, NYC--A new FAIR study finds that leading newspapers have  
been putting political considerations ahead of humanitarian concerns  
in their editorials on human rights in Latin America.

The report, "Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington's Needs," finds  
that while Venezuela is by every measure a safer place than Colombia  
to live, vote, organize unions and political groups, speak out against  
the government or practice journalism, editorials at four influential  
newspapers have portrayed Venezuela's government as having a far worse  
human rights record than Colombia's.  While the human rights concerns  
expressed in newspaper editorials do not track with the degree of  
human rights abuses documented by human right groups, they do closely  
follow Washington's official stances toward these countries.

Some highlights from the study, which looked at editorials on human  
rights in Venezuela and Colombia in the New York Times, Washington  
Post, Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times over 10 years (1998–2007):
- Nine in 10 editorials about human rights in Venezuela presented a  
strictly negative view of the country's record, while a majority of  
the Colombia editorials presented either a mixed or wholly positive  
assessment. Of the 101 editorials onVenezuela examined in the study,  
91 described the human rights situation negatively, and not a single  
editorial portrayed Venezuela's record in a wholly positive light. Of  
90 editorials on Colombia, 42 only portrayed Colombia's situation as  
negative, 32 expressed a mixed assessment, and 16 were entirely  
positive.

-The Washington Post editors offered the most positive view of the  
Colombian government's human rights record; of the paper's 13  
editorials on Colombia's record, seven presented a positive view, and  
none were exclusively negative, while 22 of 23 Post editorials on  
Venezuela were negative and none were exclusively positive.

-Of the four papers, the New York Times held the Colombian  
government’s human rights record in the lowest esteem; 20 of its 29  
editorials on Colombia were negative, none were positive, and nine  
held a mixed view. But the Times did not stray far from the norm with  
regard to Venezuela, with nine out of a total of 12 negative and three  
mixed.

The authors conclude that, "rather than independently and critically  
assessing the Colombian and Venezuelan records, major corporate  
newspaper editors, to one degree or another, have subordinated crucial  
human rights questions to what they see as the U.S.'s interests in the  
region."

The report, which is published in the February issue of FAIR's  
magazine Extra!, is available online at:http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3699 
. The pdf can be downloaded at:http://www.fair.org/reports/FAIRStudy_HumanRightsCoverage.pdf