NYT Ramps Up Venezuela Propaganda Ahead of Elections

Ricardo Vaz

Venezuelans will head to the polls on July 28 to choose their president for the 2025–30 term. Incumbent President Nicolás Maduro faces nine challengers as he runs for a third term.

Over the past 25 years of US-sponsored coups and economic sanctions, Western corporate media have always proven a reliable source of regime-change propaganda to back Washington’s policies (FAIR.org, 12/17/18, 1/25/19, 8/15/19, 4/15/20, 5/11/20, 1/11/23). Coverage builds to a frenzy around elections, whether driven by a (misguided) hope that US surrogates will win, or by a desire to delegitimize anticipated Chavista victories.

With two months to go, Western outlets are busy crafting familiar narratives, and leading the charge is the New York Times. Not busy enough with its genocide-endorsing coverage of Gaza, the paper of record was keen to back yet another key US foreign policy interest. In a flurry of recent articles, the Times laid down plenty of bias, distortions and outright lies.

Rigged reporting

The New York Times (5/6/24) sometimes seemed to think Venezuela's president was named "Authoritarian."

In less than one week, the New York Times published three articles about the upcoming Venezuelan election, all of which referred to Maduro as “authoritarian” in the headline, rather than by name, so readers immediately take note of the “bad guy”:

• "Meet the Candidate Challenging Venezuela’s Authoritarian President" (5/6/24)
• "Reality Show Contestants Compete for an Authoritarian’s Campaign Jingle" (5/9/24)
• "Can Elections Force Venezuela’s Authoritarian Leader From Power?" (5/11/24)

The Times’ Julie Turkewitz opened the third piece by claiming that Venezuelans are voting “for the first time in more than a decade…in a presidential election with an opposition candidate who has a fighting—if slim and improbable—chance at winning.”

This framing reinforces the common trope that Maduro’s May 2018 victory was “a sham” (New York Times, 5/11/24; Reuters, 5/17/24), “rigged” (New York Times, 5/6/24), “neither free nor fair” (BBC, 3/6/24) or “widely considered fraudulent” (France24, 3/12/24).

Most outlets have never bothered to back up the claims, but Turkewitz argued it was due to the opposition’s “most popular figures” being barred from running. What she did not mention was that the highest-profile of these figures, far-right politician Leopoldo López, had been convicted of trying to violently overthrow the elected government (Venezuelanalysis, 6/13/17, 2/16/15). The other candidate the Times was presumably referring to, Henrique Capriles—who lost elections in 2012 and 2013—was banned for administrative malpractice while holding public office (Venezuelanalysis, 4/11/17).

The hardline opposition, in coordination with Washington, was wedded to election boycotts and insurrection efforts. The Trump administration reportedly went so far as to threaten to sanction opposition frontrunner Henri Falcón if he did not boycott the election. Juan Guaidó, tapped a few months later to lead a self-proclaimed, US-backed “interim government,” was perfectly free to have run for president in 2018.

Assured victory

The Miami Herald (5/6/24) counts chickens that are far from hatching.

Fast forward six years, and the New York Times (5/11/24, 5/16/24) and other establishment outlets (Miami Herald, 5/6/24; Bloomberg, 5/17/24) seem excited by the hardline opposition’s electoral prospects, telling readers that candidate Edmundo González is leading in the polls, but that the Venezuelan government will not accept the results. In fact, the track record of the past 25 years is that Chavismo has always conceded in the contests it has lost, whereas the opposition and its media backers, when they are defeated at the polls, inevitably cry fraud, to the tune of zero evidence (FAIR.org, 1/27/21, 12/3/21, 11/20/20, 5/23/18).

Pundits are basing their current optimism for their candidate on a historically biased and unreliable polling industry, ignoring polls that predict a similarly lopsided victory for Maduro.

The New York Times (5/11/24) also made reference to the “enormous" turnout in the opposition’s October primaries, suggesting that this presaged a large anti-Maduro vote in the general election. Put aside the fact that the primary figures were shrouded in doubt, and that the organizing commission never released detailed results; the turnout claimed by the opposition was 2.3 million people, in a country with an adult population of 20 million. The governing Socialist Party, by comparison, has 4 million registered members.

Finally, there is also wonderment at the size of opposition rallies (AP, 5/18/24; New York Times, 5/16/24). Not only is crowd measurement a very inexact science, the context is erased by ignoring the constant, massive pro-government mobilizations taking place as well.

Shifting democratic goalposts

It was not Maduro that blocked María Corina Machado from running (Bloomberg, 3/16/24), but Venezuela's Supreme Court, which upheld her ban on running for office, citing her support for US sanctions, among other disqualifications.

Alongside prematurely cheering an opposition victory, the paper of record has been preparing arguments to dismiss the results should Maduro win. The key one is centered on US favorite María Corina Machado, who is said to be “barred by the government”—or by Maduro himself—from running, a lazily dishonest description common to many corporate outlets (New York Times, 5/11/24, 5/16/24; AP, 5/18/24, 2/28/24; Bloomberg, 3/16/24; Washington Post, 4/17/24).

A far-right zealot and heiress from Venezuela’s elite, Machado has long been a corporate media favorite (New York Times, 11/19/05). She has always been depicted as a champion of democracy despite participating in coup attempts, going on record as endorsing a foreign invasion, and allegedly receiving direct funding from the US.

Machado’s disqualification is the smoking gun used to justify Washington’s reimposition of oil sanctions (more on that below), and to prove that Maduro has not followed through on supposed commitments to hold the “free and fair elections” agreed to with the US-backed opposition in Barbados in October 2023. This is false on two counts.

For starters, many Western sources blatantly lie by stating that the Barbados Agreement allowed Machado to run for president (Washington Post, 4/17/24; New York Times, 4/17/24; Reuters, 4/17/24, 4/12/24; CNN, 1/27/24; BBC, 1/30/24). What the document explicitly says is that anyone could be a candidate, provided that they fulfill the requirements established by Venezuelan law and the constitution to run for office. In Machado’s case, she was already serving a political ban, and there was nothing in the agreement suggesting it would be lifted.

Secondly, the Venezuelan government and opposition delegations from the Barbados accords agreed on a procedure for disqualified candidates to appeal before the Venezuelan Supreme Court (Venezuelanalysis, 12/1/23). Machado—under pressure from the US, it's suspected—filed her appeal. And an appeal, by definition, can be rejected. The Supreme Court pointed to corrupt actions and the jeopardizing of Venezuelan assets abroad to uphold her exclusion (Venezuelanalysis, 1/27/24).

The ‘grip’ of poor journalism

When the same party controls Congress and the White House in the United States, you won't find the New York Times (5/11/24) complaining that the president has the legislature, the military and the country's budget "in his grip."

Apart from misrepresenting the case of one of Venezuela’s most anti-democratic figures, the New York Times (5/11/24) marshaled other arguments to dismiss a potential Maduro victory in advance:

Ahead of the July 28 vote, Mr. Maduro, 61, has in his grip the legislature, the military, the police, the justice system, the national election council, the country’s budget and much of the media, not to mention violent paramilitary gangs called colectivos.

Leaving aside the demonized colectivos and the misconceptions surrounding Venezuelan media (FAIR.org, 5/20/19), the rest of the list is astounding. The legislature was won by the Socialist Party in the 2020 elections, and has the prerogative to appoint Supreme Court justices and the Electoral Council. Corporate pundits would presumably never write that a US president “has Congress in his grip.”

What is worse is Turkewitz's dismay at Maduro wielding the constitutional responsibilities belonging to the president. The Venezuelan president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and appoints the interior minister who runs the police. And somehow media stenographers expect Venezuela’s elected leader to share control of the budget with the US’s chosen surrogates.

A recycled misrepresentation

This Spanish-language AP piece (2/9/24) retracted a misrepresentation that the New York Times (5/11/24) repeated three months later.

But the pinnacle of poor journalism in the May 11 Times piece was the following paragraph:

Mr. Maduro has hardly indicated that he is ready to leave office. He promised a large crowd of followers in February that he would win the election "by hook or by crook.”

It is unclear why the New York Times writer would expect someone campaigning for reelection to “indicate...he is ready to leave office.” However, it is the second sentence that is an absolute fabrication. In said rally, Maduro is clearly talking about defeating US- and opposition-led coup efforts “por las buenas o por las malas”—the Spanish idiom the Times translates as “by hook or by crook.”

In the video linked, uploaded by a Venezuelan journalist precisely to clarify the context of those words, Maduro lists anti-democratic plots going back to 2002, and vows that the country’s “civilian-military” unity will defeat any possible coup attempt “por las buenas o por las malas”—"by any means necessary," one might say. There is no reference to the upcoming elections at all.

The Associated Press (2/9/24) had months ago misused the Venezuelan president’s words in the same way. After widespread criticism, the news service attached a note to the Spanish-language report: "The Associated Press improperly used a quote from President Nicolás Maduro as if he had said it in connection with the upcoming presidential election." That didn't stop the Times from committing the exact same misrepresentation three months later.

Intensified dishonesty

Reuters (4/17/24) reported that the Biden administration was reimposing sanctions on Venezuela "in response to President Nicolas Maduro's failure to meet his election commitments." But the Barbados Agreement did not commit the government to allow any candidate to run, but only those who met legal and constitutional qualifications—and it asked all parties "to respect and comply with the electoral regulations and the decisions of the National Electoral Council."

The US is not only pushing opposition candidates in Venezuela; it's also using economic sanctions to undermine Maduro's presidency. Following the Barbados agreement in October, the US agreed to allow transactions with the Venezuelan oil sector for six months. But US officials claimed that the Maduro government had not fulfilled its commitments and reimposed its sanctions against Venezuela’s oil industry on April 18. In tandem, corporate media reintroduced its whitewashing and endorsement of deadly coercive measures (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21).

The New York Times and Turkewitz (5/11/24) rolled out some of the main tropes that downplay those sanctions, writing that “Maduro blames sanctions” for the country's economic troubles. This formulation places the idea that sanctions hurt the Venezuelan economy in the mouth of the demonized Maduro, when even US officials are on the record saying that sanctions are meant to cause economic pain.

The Times went on to say that “the government has been choked” by US sanctions. The implication is that only Venezuela's leaders are affected by sanctions. But as the Center for Economic and Policy Research (4/25/19) has demonstrated, they are a “collective punishment” that has caused tens of thousands of deaths per year. Yet Turkewitz failed to explain their economic impact on Venezuelans, who widely condemn them—as does most of the international community.

One coordinated mistruth spread by the Times (4/17/24, 5/16/24) and others (e.g., Reuters, 4/17/24, 5/11/24; BBC, 1/30/24) is that crushing US sanctions against Venezuela only began in 2019. In fact, the Trump administration levied financial sanctions against the oil industry in mid-2017 that sent output plummeting. The goal of that media obfuscation is far from subtle: absolve Washington of responsibility for Venezuela’s economic troubles, especially the fall in oil production.

Turkewitz's article matter-of-factly stated that a Maduro victory on July 28 will “intensify poverty” in Venezuela. Turkewitz is either taking for granted that US economic aggression will continue—without explaining that to readers—or is convinced that Washington’s adversaries are predestined by nature or fate to ruin their economies. Venezuela is in fact set for a fourth straight year of economic growth, despite the multi-billion dollar impact of US sanctions. The only thing that seems to always intensify is the New York Times’ imperialist propaganda.