as a reeking anti-Chavez propagandist even too smelly for the New York Times to try to pass off as a normal "journalist" any longer. U.S. readers have known about him for years.

The New York Times also have used the services of two OTHER anti-Chavist scrawlers, as well, Simon Romero, and Juan Forero, both truly smelly, on their own.

Amazing.

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NY Times Reporter Quits Over Conflict of Interest
Venezuela Misdeeds Adding Up on 43rd Street


By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
January 14, 2003

The New York Times’ Venezuela problem continued to snowball yesterday as its Caracas correspondent Francisco Toro resigned.

Toro acknowledged, in a letter to Times editor Patrick J. Lyons, “conflicts of interest concerns” regarding his participation in protest marches and his “lifestyle bound up with opposition activism.”

Toro’s obsessive anti-Chavez position in Venezuela was publicly known after last April’s coup when he began sending emails to Narco News and other journalists who he placed on his own mailing list attacking Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. That the Times hired him in the first place was a violation of the Times’ own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. But regarding Venezuela, it was not the first.

Toro’s resignation – the text of his letter sent to the Times management last night appears below – is the latest in a long series of missteps and misdeeds by the New York Times and its reporters regarding the New York newspaper’s one-sided and inaccurate Venezuela coverage....

http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article584.html

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Financial Times Reporter "Can't Possibly Be Neutral"

6/6/03

In January, New York Times Venezuela correspondent Francisco Toro resigned his post after acknowledging that he "can't possibly be neutral" about the political situation in that country (Narco News Bulletin, 1/14/03). Now the same reporter is covering Venezuela for another prestigious paper, the Financial Times, contributing reports on May 29 and June 3.

The Financial Times is a London-based, business-oriented daily; most of its circulation is outside of Britain, with a quarter of its sales in the United States.

Toro is a fierce partisan in Venezuela's heated political environment, a participant in anti-government protests who posts name-calling attacks on President Hugo Chavez on his website. He describes himself as a "Venezuelan journalist opposed to Hugo Chavez" (Mother Jones, 3/1/03), and has written frankly about what he perceives as his own inability to impartially report the news from Venezuela.

While all journalists have political opinions, Toro described himself as unable to put aside his strong feelings about Chavez and cover the Venezuelan controversy without prejudice. After a Times editor indicated that his anti-government weblog was unacceptable, Toro responded: "I've decided I can't continue reporting for the New York Times.... I realize it would take much more than just pulling down my blog to address your conflict-of-interests concerns. Too much of my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment, from participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest marches. But even if I gave all of that up, I don't think I could muster the level of emotional detachment from the story that the New York Times demands.... My country's democracy is in peril now, and I can’t possibly be neutral about that."

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1624

New York Times v. Hugo Chavez
By Stephen Lendman
OpEdNews Op Eds 3/12/2013 at 01:41:00

NYT is America's leading propaganda vehicle,

The Paper of Record's history is longstanding and unprincipled. It supports corporate and imperial interests. It deplores populist ones. It features managed news misinformation. It betrays its readers doing so.

When America goes to war or plans one, it marches in lockstep. It's comfortable with neoliberal harshness. It abhors progressive politics. It supports wrong over right.

It suppresses "All the News That's Fit to Print." It ignores America's march to tyranny. It endorses policies demanding condemnation. It's typical Times.

It vilified Chavez throughout his tenure. It did so unfairly. It shamed itself doing so. It matters what it says. It's America's leading voice. It prioritizes propaganda. It has global clout. It lies for power.

More:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/New-York-Times-v-Hugo-Cha-by-Stephen-Lendman-130312-398.html

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Anti-Hugo Chavez bias
Louis Proyect Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:29:05 -0800

~snip~

I was shocked to discover that a certain Francisco Toro blogs at
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/. He can best be described as having
the same relationship to Venezuela that someone like the Miami
expatriate community has to Cuba: frothing-at-the-mouth hostility. I
suppose that the paper might excuse itself for offering him a blog to
spout his propaganda if it didn’t have such a terrible record in its
Venezuela reportage.

In doing a bit of digging on Mr. Toro, who received an MSc from the
London School of Economics, I discovered that he resigned his from his
reporting job in January 2003. Frankly, he should have never been hired
in the first place. This is the letter he sent to his editor Patrick J.
Lyons:

“After much careful consideration, I’ve decided I can’t continue
reporting for the New York Times. As I examine the problem, I realize it
would take much more than just pulling down my blog to address your
conflict of interests concerns. Too much of my lifestyle is bound up
with opposition activism at the moment, from participating in several
NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest marches. But even if I
gave all of that up, I don’t think I could muster the level of emotional
detachment from the story that the New York Times demands. For better or
for worse, my country’s democracy is in peril now, and I can’t possibly
be neutral about that.”

I don’t know. It seems to me that any newspaper trying to persuade the
world that it is impartial would have questioned Mr. Toro’s credentials
from the get-go. But then again, hiring him was not the first instance
of assigning someone to cover Venezuela with a clear animus toward Hugo
Chavez.

http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu/msg30662.html

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Weekend Edition July 3-5, 2004

Venezuela's Media Tycoons

The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber

by JUSTIN DELACOUR

More than a year ago, I received an angry message from an opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez regarding an article that I wrote for Narco News criticizing the political partiality and methodological problems of Venezuela’s two most cited pollsters ("Can You Believe Venezuela’s Pollsters?", January 22, 2003). A number of anti-Chavez critiques of my article, including one by Francisco Toro, were pasted below the message.

For those who are not familiar with Toro, he is a well-known anti-Chavez activist based in Caracas whom the New York Times once hired as a reporter, in violation of the Times’ own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. Toro runs an anti-Chavez weblog called the Caracas Chronicles.

At the time that I received this angry message, I was preoccupied with other issues, so, if I recall correctly, I did not read the critique by Toro that followed the message. However, the recent agreement in Venezuela to move ahead with a recall referendum on Chavez’s government, as well as the Venezuelan President’s recent citations of my article on Radio Nacional de Venezuela, have re-sparked interest in the topic of the pollsters. Thus, I have decided to revisit one of Toro’s criticisms in order to show just how vacuous the Venezuelan opposition’s defense of their pollsters is. I will address Toro’s other "main" criticisms in future entries.

Toro writes:

The main reply to the writer… is that he’s arguing by innuendo. These guys [the pollsters] are personally anti-Chavez (indubitable) therefore they’re cheating on their polls (highly questionable). He never argues the link between the two, other than to suggest that anyone who is anti-Chavez is by definition such a nasty rat that he can’t possibly be honest in reporting poll results.

Actually, I never once put forth an argument that, since Venezuelan pollsters Alfredo Keller and Jose Antonio Gil Yepes were "personally anti-Chavez," they must have therefore been "cheating on their polls." First of all, Keller and Gil Yepes are not just "personally anti-Chavez"; they are publicly anti-Chavez, and virulently so, to the point that one was even quoted by the L.A. Times as calling for Chavez’s assassination, while the other sanctified the April 11 coup –on Peruvian radio– as a "de facto referendum." I made it abundantly clear in my original report that the pollsters had increasingly become identified publicly with the opposition and that they had made little effort to avoid this public perception. If it were only a matter of the pollsters’ "personal" beliefs –not one of public declarations– it would not be an issue. However, once the public comes to associate a pollster with a political side, the pollster’s public associations become problematic in and of themselves because they are likely to bias the responses of the population sample being polled.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/07/03/the-anti-chavez-echo-chamber/

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[center]

Francisco Toro
The "journalist" [/center]

Attack the messenger, not the message.

the trustworthy sources, Beck, Palin, Limbaugh and Coulter. Amirite? Bet I am!!!!

Are you attempting to declare the OP is inaccurate?

If so, point out the inaccuracies, please.

I wouldn't have had a clue about him. Cripes, some people will rely on anything!.

I'm so glad for the brilliant people in this group.

Some of us just got here before you did, I'll bet.

If you had the chance to have seen some of his writing before he had to leave you would have known instantly, yourself, this guy is a little bent.

Simon Romero still works for the New York Times, and Juan Forero now works at the Washington Post. As soon as you see either of their names, you must read their crap very closely, in case there's something actually truthful in it you might want to know. Chances are, it's going to be ((((((( spun ))))))) almost beyond recognition!

We're glad you're at D.U. every time we see your name. Thank you!

And you're not only brilliant, you're also very kind.

but the Chavista Mutual Admiration Society meeting isn't until tomorrow.

He has acknowledged that he is a member of an N.G.O. in Venezuela which actually receives money from a U.S. Government group, like USAID or NED. His group takes our tax dollars to conspire against the left. Cool, huh?

He comnpletely identifies himself with the Venezuelan oligarchy. He is unable to write legitimate "news" stories.

As you saw before Chavez died, the corporate sources had the picture he was dying, and started attacking Maduro weeks before his death. They didn't allow one moment go by before they started trying to transfer some of the hatred from Chavez to Maduro without mssing a beat. You can be sure after Toro realizes he can't beat Chavez up any longer and keep anyone's atentin he will fire it ALL at Maduro. You can also be 100% sure, if Capriles blew his great nose on someone's clothes, Toro would leap to his feet and cheer. Should Capriles pass gas during a speech, Toro would throw his hat in the air.

I've noticed how brutal they've been to Maduro already and a lot of it just make me sick. Chavez made his choice clear and I'm positive he made sure to choose very wisely - he loved his people and country. I have so much confidence in the people there, they were always a huge part of the constitutional process, I don't believe they'll let dirty rw tricksters turn back their progress. Thanks for this info, too!

after they learned when he was a younger man he drove a bus. Can you imagine? A country which adores a piece of #### like this, Carlos Andrés Pérez, who forced by presidential order, his military to murder over 3,000 people protesting in the streets.

[center]





He was IMPEACHED, for Chrissakes. Why is he wearing Venezuela's sash?
He was removed from office, put in prison, then was kept under house arrest.
IMPEACHED means he CEASED to be the President because he was a criminal.
He stole money from the taxpayers. That doesn't even address his massacre
of thousands of poor Veneuelans. He stole their lives. He stole their children's parents.[/center]

Back to Maduro, he doesn't care they mock his poorer state when he was younger. He drove a bus to go register to begin his Presidential campaign! Way to go, Maduro! Very cool.

I am adding a photo I just found, looking for these Pérez photos, of Hugo Chavez when he was a younger man in the military:

[center][/center]

and move ahead to simply attack the author.

He told the truth, and DU posters recognize it. Good article.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1108&pid=11338

Since the article tells the truth, you will just attack the author and not the article.

the next time you post something from Eva Golinger.

What an uphill battle you have--and we all have--to overcome the reams of lies, distortion, disinformation and propaganda of the Corporate Media, to understand what is really going on in Latin America, what has gone on there in the past and especially what is happening today with the rise of the huge leftist democracy revolution in so many countries.

The disinformation is both blatant and subtle and takes a lot of effort, thought and research to penetrate. New Republic disinformation can be on the subtler end of the spectrum, in this case, associating Chavez with "communism"--because of his friendship with Castro--when, in fact, Chavez presided over a mixed socialist/capitalist economy much like many European and Scandinavian countries--and a very successful economy at that. What is more, that economy and its social benefits, has been the clear will of the Venezuelan people, repeatedly endorsed in an election system that Jimmy Carter recently called "the best in the world."

But the title of this propagandistic article is not subtle. It is a dead giveaway. "What Fidel Taught Hugo"--as if the contest between the poor majority and the 1% of this world was reducible to two first names, contemptuously used. BOTH revolutions--the Cuban revolution during the Cold War, and the current vast leftist democracy revolution all over South America and into Central America, were/are "of, by and for" the people. That's why, when the CIA invaded Cuba back in the Bay of Pigs incident, NOBODY "rose up" to support the invaders. The current huge leftist democracy movement in Latin America has taken a different path to social justice than Cuba (which has a history of domination by the Soviet Union in its early decades), and has discovered that, if you un-rig the election system, Leftists win (a good lesson for us to study). It is NOT a "communist" revolution. It is a New Deal revolution! THAT is what our Corporate Media and Corporate Rulers don't want us to know. This revolution is about the People of Latin America, not about "Hugo" or "Fidel." The People of Latin America are the missing persons in all the Corporate propaganda about the Latin American Left.

I had the image of their eager faces waiting for the Cuban nationals to come running across the sand begging for their old slave-like jobs back, and the big shock they must have felt when bullets came whistling by their heads, as they surrendered, arrested, and traded for baby food, medicine, etc. from the U.S. for the Cuban people.

That led to the memory of something Professor Alfredo Jones wrote, who was raised in the country in a community which worked for a wealthy Cuban family, with an open sewer running across the land, and malnourished children, whose mothers would take them, after the owners had eaten dinner to the back door to ask if there was leftover food they could have for their own dinner.

They also didn't have the right or ability to go to doctors when they fell ill, and had to go to the landowners and beg for their intervention by explaining their illness, and if the owner agreed, a note giving them permission to seek help from the doc.

That meant a lot of those people lived with internal parasites, and little prospects of anything getting better for the rest of their lives. These details of course have always been ignored by our own "public-serving" news media. which never even felt it necessary to cover the fact most Cubans depended upon seasonal work, and only had employment for part of every year, beyond which they had to go pound sand, the other jobs didn't exist for them to find.

Of course, it has already been calculated and pre-arranged by the U.S. Gov't how it intends to remove all the population-saving programs in place, their world-famous medical and educational systems, their researchers. etc., etc. and replace everything with privatized operations, putting them all right back in the conditions which brought on the revolution.

Latin America just doesn't want this. The people, not their exploiters, of course, who will always work against them. In the end, the oligarchs are most definitely going to lose, no matter what.

Thanks for showing us who's the "journalist".

s

s

It won't stop the Venezuelan people of supporting his ideas and sharing his vision, though.

(and history has never been their cup of tea)

Funeral of Getúlio Vargas in 1954:





Any similarity to the "uneducated zombies" mourning Chávez is mere coincidence...

for people they respect and care about.

Sad events in both countries for the great majority of people.

Your first photo reminds me of the image taken by Cuban Alberto Korda (who took the famous Che photo) when the people swarmed into the streets of Havana to celebrate the overturn of Batista's bloody regime.
This one is "El Quijote de la Farola."

[center][/center]
Thank you for the photos. They really add a lot to the information we're learning.

s

18 holes in one the first time he played golf and was seen to walk on water as well by thousands of adoring admirers. I also read that when the Supreme Court appointed him acting President a huge rainbow was seen all over Venezuela. You just can't argue with facts like those.

You're the one who just said you don't believe CIA is involved in coups and destabilization in Latin America...

If there is someone relying in blind faith to deny what has been proved by documents and even admitted by US government itself... it's you.

with my response regarding Maduro? And, BTW, I am many things but most certainly not "YOUR DEAR". Patronizing doesn't become you.

You're accusing Chávez supporters of sanctificating him... but you seem to have unrestricted faith that CIA does not meddle in Latin American affairs...

Got it?

The bill is going to come due in the next two years:

Prediction: when the country goes to hell the chavezistas will blame Maduro for selling out the revolution. The first thing blamed will be the recent currency auction

I agree that the next couple of years will be rough. Maybe real rough.

... say that the worst is yet to come.

"Another wicked legacy: the bill Dilma will have to pay".

"The huge bill that her predecessor and electoral/political mentor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left to be paid in her term will bring huge difficulties to manage with a minimum of rationality and planning the resources she will have in her first year of government and will drastically limit the execution of the Union's budget for 2011."

http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/ricardo-setti/politica-cia/uma-outra-heranca-maldita-a-conta-que-dilma-tera-que-pagar/

Two years later...

"Brazil’s Dilma seems unbeatable 18 months ahead of the presidential election"

http://en.mercopress.com/2013/03/27/brazil-s-dilma-seems-unbeatable-18-months-ahead-of-the-presidential-election

I recognize that my statement is not really disprovable and therefore unscientific, but it is still a casual predixiton

fletcher sent me a PM telling me I was wrong about Capriles winning. I wish he'd sent it earlier and I wouldn't have made such a fool of myself. I was in the Capriles bubble. Like many of us were with Dean.

Me too.

Ricardo Setti is right-wing moron who writes for a far right magazine. So, although I disagree with naaman a lot, I believe he's more progressive than Setti (any centrist or even a center-right would be more progressive)

My point (not sure if naaman got it) is that a lot of the arguments used to criticize Chávez and chavismo (sanctification, upcoming "bill", uneducated voters) were also used against Lula and the other Latin American progressist presidents. Like "canned arguments".

It'll be falsified soon enough. No need to box him in with right wingers for making it.

The best predictions are those which can be tested quickly.

The devaluation and the auction. They think that's what Capriles should've done had he been elected.

The devaluation is the right thing. Of course they should just do it as opposed to this current thing where they are doing it but pretending they are not.

But anyway, it is being done in response to bad policy. However, the devaluation will get blamed

As it stands now wages dropped nearly in half. Capriles has said that to avert the devaluation wages could be raised by 40%. We'll see if Maduro does it (which I don't think he will because the government needs that liquidity to run itself).