While conceding that there is a much more “photogenic” upheaval taking place in Ukraine, Venezuelan journalist, Francisco Toro, lamented that major news outlets have either outright ignored or relegated Venezuela to the b-list of news items.
Scanning each of those media outlets’ websites on Thursday morning, Toro observed:
- The New York Times “World” section has “nothing.”
- The Guardian world page “has some limp why-are-you-protesting? piece that made some sense before last night’s tropical pogrom, but none after it. So… basically nothing.”
- The BBC led its Latin America section with a story on the old news of the detained Venezuelan opposition leader, “as though [the violence] last night had been just business as usual.”
- CNN, he noted, was also “chasing the thing that was the story in the old Venezuela,” i.e., the detained leader and not the violent government crackdown on protesters.
- “Al Jazeera English never got the memo,” he added, with a screenshot of a website full of Ukraine headlines.
- And showing Fox News’ webpage, Toro wrote: “Even places that love to hate the Venezuelan government are asleep at the wheel.”
As of 4:30 p.m. ET, Fox still has nothing about Venezuela on its front page. Al Jazeera has one story that requires some scrolling to notice. CNN’s front page has a small side-bar link, and CNN World has a link to a gallery of protest images. Guardian has several links, mostly towards the bottom of the page. And the Times still has nothing but a small link to a video.