On Friday, I participated in a panel discussion hosted by Al Jazeera English’s weeknight news program “Inside Story Americas,” along with Latin America scholars Gerardo Munck of the University of Southern California and Diana Villiers Negroponte of the Brookings Institution, on the ramifications of the U.S. hunt for whistleblower Edward Snowden.

As a result of many dozens—possibly hundreds—of messages from readers over the past few weeks that criticized The New Yorker’s inaccurate coverage of Venezuela, reporter Jon Lee Anderson issued a response in an April 23 online post. This marks the first time the magazine has publicly addressed its controversial and erroneous labeling of Venezuela as one of the world’s most “socially unequal” countries.

The New Yorker Magazine's Jon Lee Anderson has provided coverage on Hugo Chávez and Venezuela that is rife with errors and distortions, some of which are exposed through simple arithmetic.

The New York Times reinforces attitudes that Latin American politics can be little more than a primitive charade, starring authoritarian leaders and a hoodwinked public, punctuated by laughable distractions. Thankfully—at least within the paper's coverage—this "political theater of the absurd" isn’t commonplace here at home.

Renowned linguist, political analyst, and activist Noam Chomsky offered his thoughts on the hemisphere and the role of the United States last month. Among his many observations, he considered Honduras as "a kind of a horror story," and Haiti "an NGO dependency."

Guest post by Alexandra Hall: Columbia University's Cabot prizes provided a one-sided view of the state of press freedom and media democracy in Latin America.

Unlike Mitt Romney’s remarks disparaging the 47%, which were made in private to a coterie of wealthy donors, financial consultant Pedro Burelli disparaged 100% of Venezuelans at a free event, open to the public, and hosted by one of the most prominent, bipartisan think tanks in Washington, D.C. 

Guest post by Ansel Herz: In the Christian Science Monitor, the head of a prominent think tank advocates for a continuation of the UN's military presence in Haiti. To do so, he must avoid the UN's responsibility for the country's cholera epidemic, assaults and killings of civilians, and its corruption of Haiti's democratic institutions.

The mainstream media have falsely portrayed the exploration of the neoliberal charter cities idea—privately owned municipalities dedicated to producing exports—as if a sovereign, democratic government were undertaking the project with the consent of the population.

A new report on the U.S. role in a lethal raid that killed four civilians in Honduras has received zero coverage in the corporate media. At the very least, in light of new eyewitness testimony, news organizations should revisit the thoroughly accepted view that U.S. forces played only a support role in the May 11 raid.

The New York Times recently published concerns over Venezuela’s entry to Mercosur, Latin America's largest trade bloc. Mercosur purportedly “sets a terrible example for the region” by allowing in a country with “precarious protection of democratic rights,” according to those quoted by the Times. In contrast, the newspaper uses no space in its article to explain the background behind the antidemocratic ouster of Paraguay's president, Fernando Lugo, a reason behind Mercosur's inclusion of Venezuela.

A New York Times article indicates an outsized role of U.S. forces in Honduras, but does not utilize relevant information from previous reports; progressive news and commentary highlight the alarming decline of Honduran sovereignty. 

In response to Venezuela opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’s campaign rally on June 10, news outlets contrasted Capriles’s vigor with Hugo Chávez’s frailty, while conveying Venezuelans’ disgruntlement. So it came as no surprise that just one day later, the U.S. press reported that Chávez’s own rally to officially inaugurate his presidential campaign attracted a crowd an entire order of magnitude smaller than that of Capriles.

Activists protested outside a May 7 event held by the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute to celebrate illegitimate Honduran leader Porfirio Lobo. As a result, EFE, a major Spanish news agency, filed a story on the gala with the headline (translated from Spanish): “Lobo seeks greater backing in the U.S., while activists organize protest.”

It's obvious that the U.S. government has set the agenda for The New York Times’ coverage of Honduras. As a likely result of the State Department’s relative silence on the ongoing human rights crisis in that country, The Times has deprived its readers of crucial news that could have provided some context for a recent U.S.-Honduras drug raid that likely killed innocent civilians.