Language

Hold it right there.

Submitted August 17, 2004 - 5:26 am by Jeff Simpson
The people who fired on the anti-Chavez rally are only apparently pro-Chavez activists.

Quite disciplined yet open journalism.

Excuse me, but this claim is neither disciplined nor open.  This statement, which authentic journalist and J-School Professor Reed Lindsay has signed his name to, 'apparently' standing on its own but in fact unsupported by a single shred of evidence of any type, is a great example of exactly the type of irresponsible, inflammatory reporting that I have come to expect from the commercial media.  At the very best it is uncritical parroting of someone else's work (unless it was the other way around).  At worst, it is opposition propaganda.

Is there something I am missing here?  Is there a single documented fact aside from the say-so of Chief Briceno which makes the gunmen's support for Chavez 'apparent'?  Was there something aside from the circumstances of the incident - gunmen on motorcycles firing into an unarmed crowd (kind of like this earlier incident in a pro-Chavez neighbohood) - which made their political leanings 'apparent'?  Were they identified (despite being unnamed) and somehow linked to pro-Chavez activities?  Was it the color of their skin?  

Let's get real.  Couldn't they just as easily have been, for instance, opposition provocateurs?  And if someone had claimed that they were, without offering any evidence to back it up, wouldn't that have been pretty inflammatory?  Would any of you autenticos have reported such a claim without offering some supporting facts, or at least mentioning that there were none?

I am not laboring under some fantasy that Chavez's supporters, wafting along in the moral stratospere miles above their opposition counterparts, are somehow immune to the urge to atrocity that so frequently animates our species, and especially our testosterone-burdened sex.  Of course Chavistas get angry.  Of course Chavistas can drive motorcycles and shoot guns.  But saying it doesn't make it so.  Unsubstantiated claims like this are bricks in the wall that I thought we were trying to tear down.

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