A force for democracy? Representations of the US Government in American coverage of Venezuela

MacLeod, A. (2019) A force for democracy? Representations of the US Government in American coverage of Venezuela. Frontiers in Communication, 3, 64. (doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064)

Abstract

Since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 the United States has played a highly questionable role interfering in Venezuelan politics, funding, training, and supporting attempts at coups to remove democratically elected presidents. Yet the American media (The New York Times, Washington Post, and Miami Herald) have presented the US overwhelmingly positively, portraying it as a force for democracy and stability in the region, contrary to the wealth of official evidence. This content and discourse analysis focuses on the coverage of four key events in recent Venezuelan history and concludes that the concept of “democracy” in the media is automatically applied to official US policy, whatever it happens to be. Thus, the official American ideology of its fundamental benevolence and exceptionalism is not disputed, even when reality clearly challenges this concept.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Communication, American exceptionalism, Hugo Chavez, media criticism, Miami Herald, New York Times, US foreign policy, Venezuela, Washington Post.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Macleod, Alan
• Authors: MacLeod, A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Frontiers in Communication
• Publisher: Frontiers Media
• ISSN: 2297-900X
• ISSN (Online): 2297-900X
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 MacLeod
• First Published: First published in Frontiers in Communication 3: 64
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License