Reuters Buried Study Linking Venezuelan Deaths to U.S. Sanctions

Reuters had a story at the end of May which suggested that the notion of U.S. sanctions contributing to the deaths of Venezuelans was an allegation made up by the Venezuelan government alone. The article was titled "Venezuela Turns to Russia, Cuba, China in Health Crisis". Apparently this author, Stephanie Nebehay, thought that there is no truth about sanctions leading to more deaths.

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"The opposition blames [medical shortages] on economic incompetence and corruption by the leftist movement in power for two decades, but [President Nicolás] Maduro says US economic sanctions are the cause."

But the reality is that a month earlier at the end of April a study came out by economists that directly linked the sanctions to 40,000 Venezuelan deaths as of August 2017. That was titled "Report Finds US Sanctions on Venezuela Are Responsible for Tens of Thousands of Deaths ". Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of CEPR and coauthor of the report said:

"The sanctions are depriving Venezuelans of lifesaving medicines, medical equipment, food, and other essential imports. This is illegal under US and international law, and treaties that the US has signed. Congress should move to stop it."

When Joe Emersberger of fair.org contacted Nebehay, she said: "I was not aware of that study, but am now and will bear in mind."

So a "real" journalist had no idea about this report when they "investigated" the claim to outright dismiss it as only being supported the Venezuelan government. That's pretty silly. Economists in the Venezuelan opposition even debated the link of sanctions on Venezuelan deaths which mainstream media likes to pay attention to. But Reuters ignored the chatter, it seems deliberately.

It took until June 9 for Reuters to mention the study, but only at the end of another article by Nebehay in the aricle "Four million Venezuelans have fled crisis - U.N":

One study in April, co-authored by US economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, blamed sanctions for causing more deaths and disproportionately hitting the most vulnerable.

“We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018,” they said, arguing they were illegal under international law.

But Reuters authors still ignore the findings of the study, and prefer to parrot the mainstream line that a link between U.S. sanctions and Venezuelan deaths is merely something cooked up by the Maduro government. In an article the next day on June 10, another author mentions the deaths by sanctions as something the Venezuelan government says, as if no one else has anything to say about the truth of that claim.

The government of President Nicolás Maduro says Venezuela’s economic problems are caused by US sanctions that have crippled the OPEC member’s export earnings and blocked it from borrowing from abroad.

What Reuters and many other mainstream media organization do instead of reporting on the study and the obvious link between economically starving a country by sanctions which hurts the people, is that they blame the deaths squarely on Maduro and his government.

FAIR has written about how the "journalism" of places like the AP and Reuters works to bias coverage in favor of the partisan views. Alan MacLeod, interviewed many Venezuela-based journalists for his book which stated:

Media copy and paste from news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press, which themselves employ many cheaper local journalists.

In Venezuela, these journalists are not neutral actors, but come from the highly partisan local media, affiliated with the opposition, leading to a situation where Western newsrooms see themselves as an ideological spearhead against Maduro, “the resistance” to the government.

The mainstream media isn't concerned about the facts of reality as they claim in their battle against "fake news" and "misinformation". They are kings of bullshit. They report in ways that suit their political and ideological interests. In the case of Venezuela, it's all slanted to be anti-Maduro and pro-regime change, sanctions resulting in deaths be damned.

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Posted from KURE