Lessons (About "The" Media, That Is) From the Ecuadorean Earthquake

Day after day, we're getting media reports on the Ecuadorean earthquake. Actually it's pretty much the same report. There was an earthquake. Buildings were damaged. And people died. The number who died slowly creeps up. Not much more than that.

The "coverage" amounts to a bit of hand-wringing- Oh, those poor people, isn't that a shame- and implied sympathy.

This falls into one of two categories of story regarding "Third World" countries. These countries- and their people- only get U.S. media attention over two themes: natural disasters, and The Commies Are Coming.

Any time a "leftist" leader comes to power in a Latin American country, for example, "leftist" meaning one who tries to enact policies to benefit the majority of the people of the country, for a change, instead of a tiny, rich elite at the expense of everyone else, that president is demonized. We saw it with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, (who died of cancer, likely a result of CIA poisoning), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The U.S. media has shamelessly spread big lies about Chavez, Kirchner and Correa in particular. Kirchner was smeared as having made a secret deal with Iran to cover up Iran's alleged role in the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. This was provably false, yet the New York Times for example treated it as credible, even though if you read far enough down in their articles, it was obviously a false allegation. (That's typical of that smarmy paper. And also proves their conscious intent to deceive.) Correa was consistently smeared as some kind of enemy of a "free" press, also crap. The fact is he was viciously libeled, won a case against one defendant organ, and forewent any compensation voluntarily! That's the evidence of the "persecution" of the press. Reactionary media organs consistently work with the CIA in these countries to destabilize progressive regimes, and if there is any pushback or self-defense, the U.S. media and government go into overdrive, screaming "REPRESSION!"

In the cases of the fascist regimes, military dictatorships, and terrorist death squad states, on the other hand, the U.S, media and government are virtually silent. In fact, approving and supportive. For example, the "liberal" New York Times hailed the 1973 CIA coup in Chile that put the murderous general and traitor Augusto Pinochet in power, and for years afterwards ran approving propaganda about his regime.

In the current case of the Ecuadorean earthquake, this is a relatively minor natural disaster, in which only a few hundred people were killed. Contrast that with the Saudi Arabian-led bombing campaign against Yemen, in which over 6,000 people, more than 3,000 of whom were civilians, have been killed. Markets, mosques, apartment buildings, weddings, and hospitals have all been singled out as targets, The U.S. has provided the warplanes and munitions for this attack, is providing aerial refueling for the attack planes, making their missions possible,  and U.S. officers are stationed in Saudi command centers, providing targeting information for the Saudis. On all this, the U.S. media is virtually silent. 400 dead Ecuadoreans are worthy of commiseration, but not 3,000 (or 6,000) Yemenis, whose deaths, unlike the Ecuadoreans, were avoidable.

Of course, it would hardly do for the U.S. propaganda system to report on murders enabled by the U.S. government. That wouldn't be "responsible journalism."