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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 04:54 PM Jun 2020

WOLA: Media's 'Left' Source for Pro-Coup Propaganda in Venezuela

JUNE 4, 2020

LUCAS KOERNER



The mass media, as Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman documented decades ago, are structurally dependent on pre-ordained “experts,” who play a decisive role in filtering the information reaching the public.

When it comes to Venezuela, one DC-based think tank has become the Western media’s go-to source for confirming the US elite’s regime change groupthink (FAIR.org, 4/30/19): the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

Styling itself the “leading source for independent analysis and commentary on Latin America,” WOLA is regularly cited in corporate media reporting on Venezuela across the media spectrum. Founded in 1974 and originally part of the progressive Central American solidarity movement, WOLA moved to the right in the 1990s, until by 2002 it was calling (12/02) for a “negotiated and peaceful settlement” to the “political impasse” in Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez had been reelected with 60% of the vote two years earlier. But WOLA’s “progressive” reputation—based on its decades-old critiques of Reagan administration Central America policy—still allows it to position itself as the gatekeeper of legitimate “opposition” to US Latin America policy.

WOLA’s in-house Venezuela “experts”—Tulane University sociologist David Smilde and former Open Society Latin Americanist Geoff Ramsey—excel at disseminating polite, proceduralist criticisms of US policy while validating the imperial assumptions that justify Washington’s aggression. They demarcate the leftmost extreme of acceptable opinion on Venezuela, effectively boxing out any genuinely dissenting views.

More:
https://fair.org/home/wola-medias-left-source-for-pro-coup-propaganda-in-venezuela/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wola-medias-left-source-for-pro-coup-propaganda-in-venezuela

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