An Open Letter to the Media on the 'Irony' of Snowden's Request for Asylum in Venezuela and Ecuador

The supposed “irony” of whistle-blower Edward Snowden seeking asylum in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela has become a media meme. Numerous articles, op-eds, reports and editorials in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and MSNBC have hammered on this idea since the news first broke that Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador. It was a predictable retread of the same meme last year when Julian Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and the Ecuadorian government deliberated his asylum request for months.

Of course, any such “ironies” would be irrelevant even if they were based on factual considerations. The media has never noted the “irony” of the many thousands of people who have taken refuge in the United States, which is currently torturing people in a secret prison at Guantanamo, and regularly kills civilians in drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries. Nor has the press noted the “irony” of refugees who have fled here from terror that was actively funded and sponsored by the U.S. government, e.g. from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, and other countries.

But in fact the “irony” that U.S. journalists mention is fantastically exaggerated. It is based on the notion that the governments of Venezuela under Chávez (and now Maduro) and Ecuador under Correa have clamped down on freedom of the press. Most consumers of the U.S. media unfortunately don’t know better, since they have not been to these countries and have not been able to see that the majority of media are overwhelmingly anti-government.

Meanwhile the ENTIRE American "news media" is totally supportive of the American government.

All channels and papers say nothing against the various undeclared wars the U.S. is now fighting, the loss of civil rights, the over $1.3tn of annual Corporate Welfare, the over $1.2tn of bailouts and handouts to the big banks. 

The American media make up sham arguments over trivial issues to try and create division and tension amongst their various audiences. But that's all they are - sham arguments that allow the large Corporations to divide and rule and steal over $2.5tn a year from ordinary law abiding Americans.

Witness the blanket coverage and protests over the Zimmerman trial and verdict.
Goldman Sacs, JP Morgan, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Monsanto etc. couldn't care less about this trial or it's verdict.
It has certainly distracted large numbers of the public from doing any complaining about the Crony Capitalist large Corporations, though.
Exactly as they want it.  

The fact is that most media outlets in Ecuador and Venezuela are privately-owned, and opposition in their orientation. Yes, the Venezuelan government’s communications authorities let the RCTV channel’s broadcast license expire in 2007. This was not a “shut down”; the channel was found to have violated numerous media regulations regarding explicit content and others – the same kind of regulations to which media outlets are subject in the U.S. and many other countries. Even José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch – a fierce critic of Venezuela – has said that "lack of renewal of the contract , per se, is not a free speech issue." Also rarely mentioned in U.S. reporting on the RCTV case is that the channel and its owner actively and openly supported the short-lived coup d’etat against the democratically-elected government in 2002.

More: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/18-3#.UentkQuJWUo.twitter