Venezuela

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I can imagine that this might be a front-page story every day if it were happening in a different country, say, Egypt or Poland.

I find it easy to come up with explanations that are not chartitable toward the news media. Let us stay away from those. Think of charitable interpretations, such as American readers feel little or no connection to Venezuela. Or that this is one of many important stories that Donald Trump has driven off the front page.

What is the best, most charitable reason for the news media not to give more coverage to Venezuela? Serious, nonsarcastic answers only, please.

36 thoughts on “Venezuela”

  1. Covering Venezuela is, comparatively, difficult. There is a lot more background that the journalist has to convey in order for the piece to make sense, and understanding and assimilating that background takes a bunch of time and effort, then getting it across takes words. All of those are high cost. Given a ‘slow news day’, more people/organizations would put the effort in, but this is a US election year, the election is full of distinctive characters, it’s something most American readers are already invested in, and so it’s easy to jump right in.

  3. Foreign news are only interesting to readers ahead of and during a military intervention. DoD and State Dep are not interested in Venezuela. This is surprising, given its oil reserves, but perhaps they are on the defensive ahead of the elections (and besides Venezuela is far from Israel). Notice the digital on/off nature of Ukraine coverage – at first it was all over front pages, then as if the tap was shut off, even as the war is still on presumably.

  4. The most charitable explanation of why the news media doesn’t cover Venezuela more is simply that its audience doesn’t care very much about Venezuela.

  5. There are no good reasons for Venezuela’s problems to be other than front page news. Unless, the villains are not really the democratically elected socialists but, instead, are the very voters who supported for “free stuff” from the gov’t. And the news doesn’t want to publish stories where the voters choices have such a negative outcome.
    Puerto Rico is another place where big gov’t spending has created problems, also under covered by the press.
    The Reps might be hoping that Bernie gets the nomination over Hillary, with the expectation that they can publicize it more, but don’t want to “spook” those Dem voters who are not sure between the Crooked Clinton and The Bern.

  6. The conflict in Venezuela doesn’t tie into any larger narratives for the left or right. It would have tied into a narrative for the right thirty years ago, but right-leaning pundits care more about radical Islam than socialism now.

  7. I’m middle aged and offhand I can almost never recall a time when Venezuela was featured in the news. when Hugo came to power the news coverage increased, but largely because of his potential for low-rent entertainment as a strongman who is “amusing” when viewed from far away.

    Brazil has beaches and the good life and the rainforest (and now the Olympics), Colombia has cocaine and death squads, Peru has Indians (and used to have the Shining Path), Venezuela has…what? I think there is no iconic theme to Venezuela, no single image or concept for the public to grab hold of, despite the primacy of oil, the importance of its oil exports to the USA, and Venezuela’s long status as a middle income country, sadly mismanaged for decades.

    Venezuela is not close like Mexico. In terms of “intervening opportunities” as the geographers say, people from the US will tend to go elsewhere–to Bahamas or Jamaica for tourism, or to Haiti to do relieve work. Perhaps to Dominican Republic.

    Offhand I can think of no movies or books about the place. A Venezuelan friend has mentioned to me the “Beauty Queen factor” as a way to mention where he is from and to explain it to America.

    America is curiously insular. There are about 200 countries in the world, and in a curious way those countries all compete for mind share in the consciousness of Americans–even well educated elite Americans.

    Oddly, Venezuela’s decline is not new catching because it has not manifested as brief, punctuated episodes of mayhem and horror. And it is not at war with anyplace other than itself.

    As Ambrose Bierce said, or may have, “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” Venezuela fails that test, too.

    Besides the strategic importance to USA for oil, Venezuela probably should be kept in mind as an example of how not to run a country. It deserves a few class periods in a class on policy / history / political economy. Most Americans have no interest in such things. We need a villain, and mismanagement / ineptitude / corruption is not a villain. Even Hugo may not be adequate for a villain–he often is perceived as a mere buffoon.

  8. A journalist or editor could reasonably decide there’s only enough ‘news’ for a single story here, mostly in the form of reporting some unfortunate conditions that are like impersonal forces of nature and have little additional political implication or relevance.

    There was an El Nino drought, which meant the dam that provides most of the country’s power – reliably through good administrations and bad alike – has temporarily run dry. That causes some great suffering – though not of the newsworthy severity of a Syrian civil war or Ethipian famine – and maybe some better management could have avoided that fate, but there’s nothing anyone can do now about it in time to improve the situation except wait for the rains to return.

    Furthermore, the county hit him with a double whammy because it’s major source of income is exporting petroleum, the price of which has collapsed. Yes, maybe they should have hedged and diversified more, but it was mostly unforseen and unavoidable just like what has happened to a lot of American regions and industries dependent on commodities when the market bubble bursts. That’s sad and painful, but also not really anybody’s fault, so there is no ‘newsworthy’ greater historical, political, or moral lesson to be drawn.

    Also, Venezuela’s political ties to Iran, Cuba, Russia, and China seem weaker and less threatening post Chavez, and not really relevant to what is happening now.

    And so all you have is a limited sorry of a country in temporary economic dire straits, but with no large deathcount and no real international relevance outside its own borders – not even in the way Greece was relevant to the EU – and especially not to the US, which is now less dependent on Venezuela’s oil than at any point in recent history.

    So, one story, maybe two, and neither front page. What’s the point of more ‘misery porn’? That’s just insensitive to the plight of all those innocent people.

    • I originally got most of my “news” on the Syrian war by watching Youtube videos.

      We got the most mainstream coverage about the time when Obama said it would be un-American not to accept the refugees.

      So, I think political contentiousness (and trolling) has something to do with it. I’m not sure exactly why we can’t make any hay about a Socialist collapse other than left-wing bias, but we are supposed to be thinking of other reasons than that.

      • So, to amplify, back when Chavez was politically contentious and trolling the right, we had lots of coverage.

        • Because back then they had oil money flowing in and were a perceived threat to any chance at a US friendly, pro-markets South America.

        • Was something wrong with my point about us not getting a lot of Syrian civil war coverage until the refugees became a political issue?

  9. Traditionally the US news media looks east (primarily) to Europe and the Levant, and west (rarely) to Asia, almost never south. Only certain tropes seem to attract media attention, mostly having to do with Latin American violence, crime, revolution, etc.

    There is also a background assumption (mostly unarticulated) that LA societies exist in something like the state of nature, with the rich preying on the poor. Regimes that claim to stand for the underdog are often portrayed as the best that can be hoped for under such backward conditions. Media coverage of the Castro brothers, for example, makes no effort to conceal that they are dictators, or that the Cuban economy is a disaster – but this is balanced against their claims for social justice, improved public health, etc., which are taken at face value.

    Much the same applies to coverage of Venezuela. Economic chaos and social disorder are seen as normal, natural conditions – it’s the attempt by Chavez and Maduro to side with the underdog that’s unusual and so newsworthy…

  10. I don’t think they would cover it much in Poland or Egypt either. Slow motion disasters in foreign lands without direct U.S. involvement are boring to the readership.

    • ^This.
      Venezuela has played out in slow motion. When “events” happen, it does hit the front pages. But there are very few events to speak of. Just one long slow decent.

      Add to that what Lupis 42 said: It is too difficult to explain to the US reader.

  11. Let’s try a simple exercise. How would covering Venezuela help sell subscriptions/clicks?

  12. Why are you only accepting charitable reasons? Why not accept true ones?

    Because you’re only accepting charitable reasons, I’m precluded from giving the obvious and correct one.

  13. I don’t even really know what you are referring to and can’t quickly find anything. So, I guess that’s my uncharitable answer. I vaguely remember a blurb on NPR or somewhere and wondering the same thing you are.

    • But, back when Chavez was Donald Trumping it, there was a decent amount of coverage. So, it’s not like it can’t be done. Btw, please don’t mistake these as “sarcastic” answers.

      • But Maduro is, in some ways, even more comical than Trump. If there was more coverage, we’d all know him as “The bus driver”. Here’s a guy who declared 4-day work weeks to conserve power (classic seen vs unseen here), and when that didn’t work, declared 3-day work weeks!

  14. The simple answer is that no one on their side is telling them cover it. Prestige media has surrendered the news assignment role to the various factions Democratic Party and to the left part of social media. So if neither moveon.org nor left twitterverse is talking about, they don’t know it exists.

  15. I think it was Wednesday last week that the online edition of the Washington Post had 8 front page articles on how horrible Trump was. Six editorials, and two “news” pieces.

    I don’t even expect any kind of balance from newspapers any more.

    So the non-sarcastic answer is they don’t think Venezuela is important.

  16. In all due candor, Ben Rhodes provided the answer
    Budgets.
    Average Age 27.
    Limited backgrounds.
    Limited non-domestic exposures.
    Lack of desire to enquire or learn.
    Preferences to be “fed.”

    “Media” is only a conveyance. If those “loading” have nothing (or little), nothing will be conveyed.

  17. I would say that the US (and European, and most of the world) interest in South American news is much more focused on the Olympics and Zika than what is happening in Venezuela. In my opinion, even the Roussef impeachment brouhaha makes for more enticing (click-bait-ish) headlines than “more Chavismo, worse than before”.

    • The story blames low oil prices and right wingers in the Congress for the problems encountered. The word “socialism” appears no where, and also does not appear in their linked stories about wider problems with the economy.

      So properly sanitized and framed, they CAN cover Venezuela. It’s socialism’s role creating the mess that they they can’t cover.

  19. There is only so much foreign policy and our nation is obsessed with the Middle East and we are in an election year for the ages. There is not a lot room on the front page. Brazil, the 5th largest population, is in the middle of impeaching its leader which is still secondary to Donald Trump taco bowl. And consider in the case of Egypt has not been on the front page in three years and Poland news is third page if you are lucky.

    Look, The Republican Primary has foreign policy debates that is 80% Middle East and Israel. (Other 20% European and Russia. The Democrats were even goofier bickering about items that happened 20 – 30 years ago.) It is really weird we don’t hear about Mexico, China, India, South America, Canada, etc.

    In many ways, Venezuela could be on the front page in 2018 when they default on their Chinese debt. We will see how China reacts to it.

    • Also with cutbacks to all media, no newspaper or network news has a bureau in Venezuela and they have reporters in Brazil covering their news.

  20. Venezuela is not within one degree of mainstream sports, Donald Trump or radical Islam.

    The end.

  21. I think this is best explained by a combination of factors. One of them, I think, is the majority of the media have a hard time squaring the situation in Venezuela with their economic narrative.

    The media is left-leaning (this is well documented, not slanderous). The media has a bias for government solutions (again, well documented). The collapse in Venezuela is the result of (a) a collapse in oil prices, that revealed (b) the ineptitude and inefficiencies of a top-down economy, which (c) Maduro doubled-down on. This does not fit the economic narrative of your typical journalist.

    I don’t think this is uncharitable. I don’t think most of the media looks at Venezuela and says we can’t show this to the people or else they’ll see how bad our economics is. (i.e. I don’t think it’s deliberate.) I just think most of the media, who skew to the left, can’t wrap their heads around the Venezuela situation.

  22. Perhaps most Americans expect Latin American nations to be corrupt, almost quasi-dictatorships. Isn’t Argentina constantly going bankrupt? Brazil looks like a mess ahead of the Olympics. So Venezuela isn’t really a difference in kind, but just a difference in degree.

    None of those countries are what we would consider First-World. Third-World countries having Third-World problems isn’t exactly news.

  23. A charitable explanation of the media silence on Venezuela may be the expense of writing about the country. Venezuelan media deals only with tele-dramas, local celebrities and local sports. In comparison, if you want to write about Israel, you will be fed high quality free material and Israeli and Palestinian media organizations will be happy to arrange dramatic incidents for you to document. In Caracas you get nothing, no papers not even toilet paper. Tap water is polluted and serve no whisky in the hotel bar.

  24. More Americans are far more interested in Trump than in the slo-mo Venezuela Socialism failing state. And they stay interested in Trump because of the news.
    Were there news about Venezuela not having toilet paper, for instance, there would some stories that generate interest and further stories.

    [Other comments seem to have been deleted, that’s strange? or an Arnold Kling choice?]

  25. Beats me. But not even Venezuela, how about Mexico? Does anybody have any idea of current events in Mexico with its population of 125 million? Besides drug tunnels at the border, I have no clue what’s going on with our large southern neighbor.

    Yet, we hear a disproportionate amount about what is happening in Israel with its population of 8 million. Really? That’s smaller than North Carolina! Why should I care to the proportion that I see it in the headlines? Israel is a small wealthy country that is in good enough shape to take care of itself.

    Venezuela, on the other hand, with a population of 30 million, is in a total pickle brought on by ideas that are being expressed right here in the US by a current presidential candidate. Which is more important?

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