Articles by: Michael Corcoran
In January, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a weeklong tour of Latin America. That the media seem to dismiss the tour as a joke, while at the same time ramping up fears that somehow Iranian relations in the Americas poses a security risk to the United States, only further shows how little credibility there is in the U.S. corporate media coverage of the Iranian–Latin American relationship.
On September 30, CNN’s correspondent in Ecuador, Rodolfo Muñoz, resigned after 14 years on the job. That day Muñoz had covered a police revolt that paralyzed Ecuador, in what President Rafael Correa called a coup attempt. Muñoz’s decision to quit raises questions about how the U.S. media covered the crisis.
On November 29, the de facto authorities in Honduras held a blatantly fraudulent election—complete with state violence against dissidents in the run-up to the voting, ballot irregularities, and manufactured turnout numbers. Sadly, some countries are recognizing these elections, giving unwarranted legitimacy to former de facto president Roberto Micheletti and the other coup leaders who took power in June.
When Rudolfo Muñoz, a reporter working in Ecuador for CNN, resigned from the cable news channel in the immediate aftermath of the September 30 political turmoil, not a single noteworthy U.S. news outlet—including CNN—bothered to report on his departure. Fittingly, Muñoz said that CNN had a “distinct slant” and “acted as if nothing happened” despite “proof that [police forces] tried to kill the president.” While it is still unclear whether the violent events of September 30 constituted an attempted coup, as President Rafael Correa claimed, Muñoz’s critique raises questions about how the crisis was covered in the U.S. mainstream media.