David Usborne writes for the UK independent, a newspaper that, mainly due to its excellent Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, has developed a completely undeserved reputation for offering a real alternative to the hard right media. That’s one reason that Usborne’s “report” from Caracas is of interest. Another is that it is putrid journalism even by the rotten standards set by the international press for Venezuela coverage.

The verbose headline to the article is “Corruption, falling oil prices and talk of a coup: The end of Chavez’s socialist dream in Venezuela”. Readers are told “it is two years since Hugo Chavez’s death but to his followers it feels like a lifetime. Venezuela is collapsing amid falling oil prices, rampant corruption, political oppression – and dark rumours of an imminent coup.”

Usborne engages in what Orwell called “doublethink” regarding the coup rumors: accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. For example, Usborne says that according to a government critic, Oscar Alvan, “while many members of the military are embedded in the government, there are others in the professional military who are privately despairing of Mr Maduro and could yet try to oust him.”

The threat of a coup is depicted as sober analysis if it comes from a government critic. This sends a clear message to any potential coup perpetrators about the way the international media would react to a coup that ousted Maduro’s government. It would be applauded or, at most, depicted as a sad but inevitable outcome of Maduro’s “oppression” and of “economic collapse.” That’s exactly the way the corporate media in the USA, where Usborne is based, reacted to the coup in 2002 that briefly ousted Hugo Chavez. The media followed the lead of the U.S. government. Usborne ignores the 2002 coup in this article entirely — quite a brazen omission in an article that frequently mentions coup rumors and allegations.

Incidentally, the UK Independent’s editorial board openly applauded the 2009 coup in Honduras:  “it is possible that the army might have actually done Honduran democracy a service” it said.  Usborne is very unlikely to be “reporting” in a way the top people at the “Indy” would object to in the least.

Usborne adopts a contradictory position when he reports Maduro’s claims that a coup attempt was just thwarted: “When he took to the airwaves a week ago to trumpet foiling one more conspiracy to topple him most observers rolled their eyes, including the US which dismissed as ‘ludricous’ [sic] any notion it had played a part. Since becoming President, he has spoken of more than a dozen purported such plots.”

There you have it folks. Maduro’s critics say a coup is possible or “imminent” and it is rational analysis. Maduro says he foiled a coup and it is “ludicrous” — especially if Maduro claims U.S. involvement — and we should all “roll our eyes.” Classic doublethink.

One reason Usborne ignores the U.S. (and corporate media) endorsed 2002 coup is probably to shield himself from ridicule for saying jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez “is quite clearly a political prisoner.“ Here is a video of Leopoldo Lopez (along with Henrique Capriles) quite clearly participating in the kidnapping of a government minister during the 2002 coup. Lopez would quite clearly never have seen the outside of prison — if he were lucky — had he done this in the UK or USA. Ask Chelsea Manning — sentenced to decades in jail — for simply embarrassing, not kidnapping, U.S. officials.

Usborne also depicts the Maduro government’s recent arrest of Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma as completely unjustified. It speaks volumes that readers can turn to a corporate outfit like Reuters, whom I frequently criticize, to get context Usborne completely ignored. Reuters noted “radical activists acknowledge the existence of an underground movement bent on toppling Maduro, and recently detained student radical Lorent Saleh surfaced in a government-broadcast video praising Ledezma as ‘an old fox… the politician who has most supported the resistance.’  The public prosecutor’s statement mentioned Ledezma’s ‘links with the case of Lorent Saleh,’ among other activists in jail accused of planning attacks.”

Speaking of Reuters, it appears Usborne pulled a few quotes from Reuters and passed them off as original reporting: a quote from Ledezma’s lawyer and a quote from the public prosecutor. Two days after publication of Usbrone’s article that was still the case.

Usborne gets downright comical, unintentionally, when he tries to conflate a ban on alcohol sales during Carnival with a ban on consumption. He wrote “While the rest of the country was under a strict a dry law — a total ban on alcohol sales for the four days of Mardi Gras — the elite was having a party.”

Wow. Don’t people in Venezuela store alcohol in their houses for private consumption? A long time Caracas resident told me via email “of course people store up and Carnaval is a big party time all over. You could find a party like that anywhere — particularly so, in fact, in opposition quarters where there’s a lot more money and swimming pools.” The Caracas resident also pointed out that the “dry law” predates the rise of Chavismo and is aimed a limiting car crashes and other excesses during the holiday.

Usborne closes his article by saying “Rumours persist that Mr Chavez died long before it was actually announced nearly two years ago and the body displayed was a dummy.” Predictably, Usborne does not “roll his eyes” at those rumors. One of the anti-government sources Usborne quotes says “please help us.” The article is written as if Usborne had replied to this plea by saying “tell me anything you want. I’ll work it in. My editors won’t care.”