Dishonest BBC documentary smears Venezuela - complain!

This World on the BBC dedicated its most recent programme to Venezuela. British journalist John Sweeney presented The Trillion Dollar Revolutionary on Monday 19 November 2007 on BBC 2 at prime time.

Unfortunately, the programme portrayed a vision of Venezuela that has no basis in reality and totally misrepresented the process of change happening in the country. It was neither fair nor accurate and was littered with dishonest smears that would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous.

For example, Sweeney quotes the so-called "watchdog" International Transparency to claim that Venezuela has the second-highest level of corruption in the Americas. He neglects to mention, however, that the group itself does not provide any hard data or conclusive figures to back this up - instead, it grades Venezuela based on public opinion.

Board members of its Venezuelan chapter include Mercedes de Freitas and Robert Bottome, who are both fully committed to the overthrow of President Chávez. The former receives funding from the US through the National Endowment for Democracy and the latter is the brother of the director and main shareholder of RCTV, a Venezuelan television network that played an active role during the 2002 coup d'etat against Chávez. They are not credible sources yet their propaganda is presented as fact.

Just as seriously, Sweeney distorts the reality surrounding the student demonstrations in Venezuela. He implies that all Venezuelan students oppose Chávez when in fact the Venezuelan student population is composed of approximately 1,500,000 people, of which roughly 40,000 actively protest against the government - a very loud, well-funded and violent minority.

Sweeney criticises Venezuelan social policies and mistakenly claims that 60 per cent of the Venezuelan population live under poverty line. However, according to the most recent study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Venezuela has lowered its levels of poverty from 37.1 per cent to 30.2 per cent and extreme poverty from 15.9 per cent to 9.9 per cent since President Chávez took office.

These are just some of the more blatant examples of sloppy journalism that fall well below the professional standards expected of the BBC. By the end of the programme, it was clear that Sweeney went to Venezuela to do a hatchet job on president Chávez and the script sounded like it had already been written before he'd even set foot in the country.

The international community and people all over the world can help Venezuelans construct an egalitarian and democratic society by getting objective information and learning about this South American country and also condemning this type of irresponsible journalism, which is little more than carefully targeted propaganda produced to undermine support for the Venezuelan government abroad.

Hands Off Venezuela encourages supporters to complain about misleading journalism in a polite and constructive manner. The producers of This World can be contacted via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on (020) 8752-7500. Please copy any correspondence to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.