Venezuela’s Outages and the Western Press’s Confirmation Bias Problem
Venezuela’s Outages and the Western Press’s Confirmation Bias Problem
By Peter Bolton, Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Recent reports about Venezuela’s ongoing infrastructural difficulties have given particular attention to such matters as electrical grid outages, which are said now to be chronic across the country. Much has been made, for instance, of President Nicolás Maduro’s announcement this month that his government is implementing a three-day weekend to conserve energy resources.[1] Similarly, increasing attention has been given to the water shortage, which is said to be leaving Venezuelans without access for weeks on end.
The tone of these reports, like most of the coverage of Venezuela in the Western-controlled press, is laced with undercurrents implying that news of doom and despair is all that ever emanates from the South American country. In a special report for USA Today, for instance, Peter Wilson claims that President Maduro’s recent moves have become necessary to “avert a collapse of the power grid.”[2] A Wall Street Journal article claims “the nationwide water shortage is crippling Venezuela, leaving faucets dry and contributing to rolling blackouts.”[3] Words like disaster, breakdown and ruin adorn the prose of these reports and communicate a sense of ominous foreboding, as if Venezuela were about to fall into a dark hole toward the center of the earth. The implication is that as long as the Chavistas are in government all Venezuela news is bad news and that every last piece of it represents one last nail in the coffin of a failed political project.
But the truth is never as black and white as the Venezuelan opposition and western media paint it. If the Maduro government were as incompetent as these reports imply then its support would have plunged to nil long ago. Yet public backing for Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), though admittedly down significantly from the heydays of the Hugo Chávez presidency, has remained strong even during this time of downturn and scarcity. Even in the landslide defeat that it suffered in last December’s National Assembly elections, the governing party still managed to win 5.5 million votes, hardly a negligible fringe of Venezuela’s voting populace. How could it be that the governing party, which according to the mainstream discourse is plunging the country back into the dark ages, can receive 5.5 million votes even during a crisis for which it is being blamed? Such considerable continued support for the PSUV at such a time demands a reexamination of the media narratives about the situation that Venezuela faces.
Double Standards and Media Deceits
It is not that these press reports necessarily tell outright lies or even misrepresent the facts; there are more subtle ways to convey hidden messages about what the outside world should think about Venezuela and its government. Mainstream reporters and commentators use two principal tactics to distort the full picture of what is going on there. First, almost all of them seem to assume unthinkingly that anything bad that happens in Venezuela must somehow be the government’s fault. The idea that there might be other legitimate explanations or that forces outside the government might deserve full or partial blame is often either ignored or automatically discounted as a desperate rationalization of the government to deflect from its own incompetence. What we see here is a self-justifying loop: something bad happens in Venezuela, therefore its government is incompetent, all alternate explanations are just attempts by the government to divert blame, thereby proving that it is incompetent. In critical thinking theory, this is called a closed system of thought since it has its own internal mechanisms to explain away conflicting evidence. In other words, since the view that the entire Chavista project has been a failure is taken as the starting point, all problems experienced in the country are made to fit that conclusion.
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http://www.coha.org/venezuelas-outages-and-the-western-presss-confirmation-bias-problem/
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They went from effectively controlling the entire legislature a decade ago to losing 2/3 of the legislature in a landslide... but that's really proof that they aren't all that unpopular because someone voted for them? 
How could it be that the governing party, which according to the mainstream discourse is plunging the country back into the dark ages, can receive 5.5 million votes even during a crisis for which it is being blamed?
How? The same way every communist dictator gains "support". By threatening the proles.
"I wanted to build 500,000 units of social lodging next year, but I am doubting this now. I'm doubting this not because I can't build them, I CAN build them. But I asked you for support and you didn't give that support to me" - Maduro
