It’s always a tricky moment for the corporate media when a foreign leader dies. The content and tone need to be appropriate, moulded to whether that leader fell into line with Western policies or not. Thus, when Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez died in 2013, conventional coverage strongly suggested he had been a dangerous, quasi-dictatorial, loony lefty. For instance, the Guardian‘s Rory Carroll, the paper’s lead reporter on Venezuela from 2006-2012, appeared to let slip his own personal view on Chavez when he wrote:

To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.

By contrast, the sociologist and independent Venezuela expert Gregory Wilpert praised Chavez’s ‘tremendous legacy’ and ‘many achievements’. These included nationalising large parts of the private oil industry to pay for new social programs to tackle inequality, much-needed land reform, and improved education and public housing.

When the genuinely dangerous, neocon ideologue and Cold War fanatic Ronald Reagan died, his appalling legacy - not least his blood-soaked support for brutal regimes in Latin America – was burnished to a high sheen, presenting the former US president as a stalwart defender of Western ‘values’. For the Guardian‘s editors: ......

King Abdullah spared BBC blushes by not dying on the very day that the UK’s state broadcaster was celebrating ‘transparency and democracy’. Imagine the conundrum in juggling all of that with coverage of a strongly Western-aligned tyrant. A close call indeed. As Neil Clark said on Twitter:

No need to pen long pieces on western elite’s double standards on “democracy” & “extremism”.Just read their glowing tributes 2 #KingAbdullah

Reds Under The Bed!

Further difficulties for ostensibly democracy-loving corporate media soon followed with the stunning victory of Syriza, the ‘radical’ party of the left, in the Greek general election. Repetition of ‘radical left’, and significant mentions of Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras as a ‘former Communist’, set the required tone. Namely, watch out – Red Scare!

As ever, such a rational view of the real threats to democracy from powerful elites was missing from ‘BBC Democracy Day’ and its coverage by the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media. The fact that a brutal, Western-allied Saudi tyrant died around the same time only highlighted the corporate media’s central role in propping up undemocratic systems of power, class and privilege.