The Representation of Torture in the 'War on Terror'
11 February 2013

In the mainstream media, we are presented with 'a "war on terror" conducted by a "civilized" West against a less civilized "other"'1. There are obvious flaws with this narrative. For example, even the barest of bones of the 'civilized' West's historical record demolishes its proclaimed values and objectives. Thus, a nation...

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US Election Foreign Policy Debate: UK Editorials on the Role of the US
6 November 2012

In a strongly-worded endorsement for Barack Obama in its pre-election issue, the editors of The New Yorker1 write that the 'flawed and complicated' 'human being', Obama, 'has sometimes struggled to convey the human stakes of the policies he has initiated'. This is undoubtedly relevant in regards to foreign policy. Having come...

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A Roundup of Media Coverage Surrounding the Venezuelan Election
24 October 2012

In the run up to the 7 October Venezuelan election, it was reported that President Hugo Chávez would face 'the toughest electoral challenge of his reign' (The Times)1, 'that [would] decide the fate of his socialist revolution and could rearrange the region's balance of power' (Financial Times).2 The election, then,...

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Promises and Failures: The Economist and the Venezuelan Election
3 October 2012

In an interview with the New Left Project, Dr. Lee Salter, following research into BBC reporting on Venezuela stated that 'the coverage of Venezuela has particular importance mainly because it is a case in which a democratically mandated government faces a plethora of reactionary forces seeking to destabilise and overthrow it'.1...

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Jim Armitage and the Skewed Reporting on the Venezuelan Elections
26 September 2012

On Saturday 22 September, a little over two weeks before the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election of 7 October, Jim Armitage asked in The Independent: 'A devil to the US, a folk hero in much of Venezuela, could Ken Livingstone's old chum Hugo Chavez finally be on his way out?' Apart from...

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The BBC, East Timor and the Revision of History
13 September 2012

On Thursday, 6 September 2012, the BBC reported US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's 'landmark trip to East Timor', making her 'the first US secretary of state to do so since the country's independence in 2002'. 'Mrs Clinton', explained the BBC, 'said her visit was a sign of America's support for...

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All the Facts on Agent Orange?
24 August 2012

On the back page of its World news section, The Independent relayed a tiny 106 word Associated Press report, that the United States is 'beg[inning] a landmark project to clean up a dangerous chemical [dioxin] left from the defoliant Agent Orange, 50 years after American planes first sprayed it on Vietnam's...

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Simplifying History: the BBC's Coverage of US and Cuba Relations
3 August 2012

Cuban President Raul Castro 'grabbed the microphone' at a Revolution Day ceremony in eastern Guantánamo, reported the BBC, and 'made a seemingly impromptu address' in which he 'said he is willing to hold talks with the US'. So explained an article which left much unsaid with regards to US-Cuba relations. In his...

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America's Secret War: Much Omitted During Clinton's Diplomacy Tour
20 July 2012

On 11 July 2012, The Independent's Andrew Buncombe reported on US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's visit 'to the scene of one of the darkest episodes of US foreign policy' - Laos, where she 'saw first-hand the aftermath of America's "secret war" in which about two million tons of bombs were...

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How the Media Fails to Highlight the Illegality of US Drone Strikes
14 June 2012

Under the Obama administration, the frequency of US drone strikes - what Professors Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann have termed 'Washington's Phantom War' - have increased dramatically.1 Indeed, President Barrack Obama's 'speciality', John Pilger observes, 'is the use of drones armed with Hellfire missiles against defenceless people'. Confirming this assertion,...

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Forgetting Complicity: Immediate Coverage of a Dictator's Life Sentence
11 June 2012

In both the UK and the US, it is overwhelmingly the case that the mainstream media present the actions of their respective governments as benign and devoid of self interest. Consequently, any actions which may on the surface appear aggressive are interpreted as defensive or undertaken in good faith, in the...

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Refusal to Connect the Dots: Analysing Rory Carroll's Portrayal of Latin America
11 May 2012

Between 2006 and his recent relocation to the United States, Rory Carroll reported from Caracas, Venezuela as The Guardian's South America correspondent. The selectivity and omissions characteristic of Carroll's work prompted Samuel Grove in Red Pepper to deconstruct in detail the bias of Carroll's reporting on Venezuela, which, he commented,...

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