[With the recent departure of Financial Times correspondent Andrew Webb-Vidal from his post in Caracas, Justin Delacour reviews Webb-Vidal's coverage of Venezuela during his time there and concludes it was partisan and sometimes erroneous. Delacour hopes that the Financial Times will turn over a new leaf in its future reporting of the country. --Ed]
How Financial Times’ Limited Sources Compromised its Venezuela Coverage
By Justin Delacour - Venezuelanalysis.com
April 16, 2007
The Financial Times prides itself on its “authoritative, accurate and analytical” coverage of world events. Unfortunately, in the case of the paper’s reporting on contemporary Venezuelan politics, it has fallen far short of the mark. With the recent departure of Financial Times correspondent Andrew Webb-Vidal from his post in Caracas, now is as good a time as ever to review Webb-Vidal’s partisan and sometimes erroneous coverage, in hopes that the Financial Times will turn over a new leaf in its future reporting of the country.
A review of more than one hundred stories by Webb-Vidal reveals how simplistically the Financial Times has portrayed Venezuelan civic and political life. As the country has embarked on one of the most profound social transformations in its history, Webb-Vidal offered little of the objective perspective that other foreign journalists have brought to their craft. In a country often polarized by class and ideology, Webb-Vidal appeared to have taken up journalistic residence in an upper-middle class Venezuela, rarely venturing outside his comfort zone to explore the working class experience. At best, this resulted in a one-sided picture of the country. At worst, it meant that the Financial Times missed important stories altogether.
Webb-Vidal had a narrow range of sources from which he regularly quoted. They generally represented one of three categories:
- Venezuelan opposition leaders, with whom Webb-Vidal presumably had regular and active contact;
- U.S. based think-tanks who, while not always pro-opposition, share the U.S State Department’s view of Venezuela as a “strategic threat” to the region.
- Spokespersons for foreign governments. These primarily include U.S. officials but also a number of anonymous “diplomats” who invariably share the same views.
In analyzing press coverage of Venezuela, I have found that, when correspondents and/or their editors want to present an issue in a biased manner, they often look to particular non-governmental sources to corroborate the story’s slant and thereby conceal its bias. As a former head of the Los Angeles Times’ Washington bureau describes this journalistic practice, “When you are going to make an opinionated kind of a statement, particularly in the news columns, editors insist you attribute it to someone other than yourself—so you go shopping.”[i]
Given the press’ tendency to rely upon non-governmental sources to buttress biased storylines, I focus my quantitative analysis on Webb-Vidal’s choices of which non-governmental sources to cite (leaving aside citations of Venezuelan government sources, official opposition leaders, and U.S. government sources). An analysis of one hundred Venezuela-themed stories by Webb-Vidal from December 2003 to May 2006 shows that the Financial Times quoted and paraphrased non-governmental critics of the Chavez government nearly three times as often as those in favor. In the Financial Times’ citations of non-governmental sources, a total of 55 opinions against Chavez or his policies were expressed during this period, as opposed to only 19 in support (See Appendix for notes on definitions and methodology).
The following pie chart offers a breakdown of Webb-Vidal’s non-governmental sources:
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