Chavez is an object lesson in the way the mainstream media works. Consider this article in the Sunday Times by Sarah Baxter. Firstly, there’s the title, with its reference to Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief: “Mischief stirs for Bush in the ‘axis of good’.” Perhaps if Baxter knew more about Waugh than the titles of his books she would have remembered he saved his greatest scorn for foreign correspondents.

Secondly, there is the dateline: Washington, not Venezuela. This is very much a US-centric article. Baxter has perfectly internalised Washington’s viewpoint, writing: “Latin America is breaking out of its northern neighbour’s back yard.” The keen literary critic might find some ironic free indirect discourse there. I think it is more likely that Baxter really does think that South America is the US’s property. And while we’re getting up close to the written style of the US State Depar— sorry, of Sarah Baxter, how about this one:

Although it remains a distant threat, the Pentagon and the CIA did not see off the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 only to allow a fresh alliance of potentially nuclear-armed America-haters to form as close as 90 miles from the coast of Florida.

Now, pay attention please. To what does “it” at the start of the sentence refer to? The Pentagon? Well, grammatically yes (though it should be “they” since it’s the Pentagon and the CIA), but presumably the US State De– sorry Sarah Baxter — had in mind the Soviet Union — an extremely distant threat indeed, since it does not exist any more. Anyone who can tell me to what the word “it” refers to please use the comments button.

I could go on — the childish taunts about president Evo Morales’s jumpers, name-calling (Chavez is an “oil-rich joker”) and guilt by association (Iran, Hamas, Castro) — but the ambassador of Venezuela, Alfredo Toro Hardy, wrote the following letter to the Sunday Times. Please note, though, Baxter’s article appears under the heading of “politics”; Hardy’s under that of “opinion”.

In her article “Mischief stirs for Bush in the ‘axis of good'” (World News, last week), Sarah Baxter presents a one-sided perspective. Nothing is said about Washington�s active support and connivance with Venezuela’s opposition, the coup d�etat against President Chavez, the oil strike that cost the country more than $10 billion or his seven visits to the US while Bill Clinton was president, during a period when constructive bilateral relations prevailed.

It was with President Bush’s neocons and Cuban exiles in Washington that harassment of the Venezuelan government and bilateral tensions began, and it was Donald Rumsfeld who initially compared Chavez to Hitler. The article does mention, though, an alleged anti-semitism from Chavez, based on a phrase that was put out of context. This anti-semitism was emphatically denied by the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela.

Somewhere there must be a web site dedicated to western reporting of Chavez.