#5: Get Your Act Together

Take a look at this article.

In Lit this week we discussed the sensationalism of its title. Here I will investigate the article itself.

The title sums up the content fairly well: "Chávez's Opposition Gets Its Act Together in Venezuela." The narrative concerns the fallout of a 2010 Venezuelan election under then-President Hugo Chavez.

My favorite part about this article is that it seems to hate everyone it talks about. Though the article appears to support the opposition, it is clear that the author doesn't think very highly of its efforts. "At last!" the author seems to say, "Chavez's opposition is FINALLY getting its act together! (Took 'em long enough!)" Even better, the article begins:
Ever since he was first elected 12 years ago, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been fortunate to face what is the western hemisphere's most incompetent political opposition. His opponents' most boneheaded move came in 2005, when they refused to take part in parliamentary elections.
Ouch. The "western hemisphere's most incompetent" and "boneheaded" opposition, eh? That's not exactly high praise, and this impacts a reader's views on the opposition. This may be a reader's first impression, if they were relatively uninformed about Venezuela to begin with, and first impressions count. The author expects Chavez's opposition to do better, and apparently thinks you should, too.

Even so, the author thinks even less of Chavez himself. In short, he is a left-wing, undemocratic, anti-American authoritarian. Well, all right, then! The article discusses his 12 years in office, consolidation (read: corruption) of the judiciary, inability to control crime or inflation, etc., etc. It mentions in passing that "hey, at least he holds elections, even though he rigs them," but it's clear that this article strongly disapproves of Chavez as a politician and leader, and views him as both authoritarian and un-American. As above, this strongly impacts a reader's views of Chavez in much the same way.

Now we know the article has opinions, and if the article has opinions, the article is biased.

First off, this article is subject to bias by source. Time is an American magazine, so the article views its subject through an American lens. Chavez, a communist, is treated as communists usually are by American media: undemocratic, authoritarian, possibly evil, and un-American. The article might cast Chavez in a more positive light were he a right-wing leader who was more friendly to US interests (like Saddam Hussein until he fell out of favor in 1990). The American bias is well demonstrated here:
Chavez proved that he's still a popular figure in Venezuela, where his control of the hemisphere's largest oil reserves has helped him reduce poverty and enfranchise large swaths of the population once ignored by the country's corrupt elite. "The revolutionary forces won a very important victory," Chávez insisted.
Apparently, Venezuela liked Chavez more than the article does. In any case, this sort of bias causes anybody reading the article to also look at its subject with an American lens, be they Venezuelan, Canadian, Japanese, etc. This also propagates American values and opinions of Chavez and Venezuela.

Next, the article demonstrates bias by labeling. Stronger labels are applied to Chavez than to the opposition. Chavez is described as "socialist," "left-wing," "revolutionary," "not quite the dictator his foes claim he is" (though still probably a dictator), etc., where his opposition is called the relatively mild "conservative" and self-evident "anti-Chavez" (never mind "incompetent" and "boneheaded," of course.) Some readers, myself not included, may react more strongly to "socialist" or "left-wing" than simply "conservative."

Finally, I saw some bias by spin. This article is interesting because it starts out spun one way but is actually largely spun the other. It opens, of course, by briefly calling the opposition incompetent, but mostly focuses on Chavez being a dictator. Make no mistakes: this article likes the opposition and doesn’t like Chavez. It’s just that, for the first paragraph, it seems like it could be the other way around. Here we see the author's personal views propagated to readers through the text, similarly to the propagation of American views due to source bias.

As articles go, this one seems relatively unbiased. The labeling is justified to an extent and the source can't really be helped. That said, it's worth noting that the bias is still there, and it took some analysis to tease it out fully. Even the least biased source still has some, and it's useful to be able to tell what the bias is. If the bias is recognized, in my view, it's neutralized. Mostly.

Hugo Hugo Chavez, Hugo Hugo Chavez, he is crazy crazy Hugo, Hugo Hugo Chavez!

Larisa

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