The mainstream media is howling over Hugo Chávez's bid to change the constitution for a third term, while coverage of Colombia's Álvaro Uribe, a staunch U.S. ally, to do the same raises few, if any, questions in the media. U.S. news coverage of parallel political events in Colombia and Venezuela offers an opportunity to test the usefulness of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model,” developed in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.