The New York Times published a major report on starvation under Nicolás Maduro’s socialist dictatorship this weekend after repeatedly taking huge sums of cash from the regime to publish their anti-American propaganda.
The report, published on Saturday, highlights cases of dozens of families whose children have starved to death amid the country’s worsening humanitarian and economic crisis.
It also details stark realities that Breitbart News has been reporting for years, such as the huge numbers of people who scavenge just to survive, the chronic lack of medicine in the country’s hospitals, and the mass hyperinflation that has crushed the value of the bolívar currency making it practically worthless.
However, the report fails to make any significant reference to the socialist ideology behind the country’s collapse that took hold with former president Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” and is now in the hands of Nicolás Maduro, who has effectively rendered the country a dictatorship by dissolving the power of democratically elected bodies.
The article only makes one reference to Maduro himself and focuses on his belief that the country’s problems are caused by the United States:
President Nicolás Maduro has acknowledged that people are hungry in Venezuela, but he has refused to accept international aid, often saying that Venezuela’s economic problems are caused by foreign adversaries like the United States, which he says is waging an economic war against his country.
As the crisis has developed, under Chávez and later Maduro, the Times has provided consistent but often superficial coverage of Venezuela, blaming it solely on issues such as hyperinflation and the fall in oil prices.
The outlet also recently ran headlines claiming that the Maduro’s socialist party had “defied polls” in the country’s regional elections but barely acknowledged the widespread evidence of voter fraud and intimidation used by government forces. They have also provided negative coverage of the country’s embattled opposition, linking them to the violence that took place during the anti-government protests that dominated the country this year.
While the newspaper’s coverage has both acknowledged the crisis in Venezuela and blamed influences outside of nearly two decades of socialist policies for it, the Times‘ sales wing has repeatedly collaborated with the regime.
In September, the Times ran an advertisement from the Maduro regime that claimed President Donald Trump seeks to “manufacture a political crisis” in the country after the White House imposed multiple economic sanctions against the country’s oil industry.
According to Venezuelan outlet Runrunes, the government, which is known to fund itself through numerous drug trafficking and money laundering operations, paid a handsome $200,000 for the ad.
In February, the paper also published a full-page open letter by Venezuela’s Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who reportedly maintains ties to the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah, condemning the U.S. Department of the Treasury for sanctioning him as an official “Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker” for his involvement with drug organizations.
In 2015, the Venezuelan government unveiled another full-page ad claiming that the often-violent mass deportation of Colombians from its border territories was necessary for national security interests due to the country’s ongoing civil war, despite the fact that Venezuela was a major source of funding Marxist terrorist group the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Maduro himself is also a published New York Times contributor, with the paper running a column in 2014 that blamed the country’s large-scale anti-government protests on the country’s elite and the “1%.”
The Times has previously defended their advertising policy to Breitbart News, stating that the company “accepts advertisements in which groups or individuals comment on a public or controversial issue” but refusing to comment on whether the Venezuelan government ads crossed any ethical boundaries.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.