CNN and the NY Times stand exposed as propaganda organs for the US Empire, pushing a fake story about a coup that was all in the imagination, in hopes that soldiers would believe it was real and desert, and that masses of Venezuelans would think it was real and take to the streets to support it. Neither happened, writes TCBJ! jounalist Dave Lindorff, and CNN, the Times and other US news outlest were exposed.

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By Dave Lindorff

After days of breathless reporting in the US media about public and military support for Venezuelan President Nicola's Maduro collapsing, and about an April 30 coup by presidential poseur Juan Guaidó, we now know the truth: The whole thing was a fraud, staged at the instigation of Washington in hopes that the Venezuelan people and rank-and-file troops would fall for the trick and there was an actual coup.

We also know, from an excellent May 2 report by Michael Fox in the Nationmagazine, that the US mainstream media and its reporters i promoting that dangerous fraud.

Take CNN. In its reporting on the "uprising" announced by Guaidó on Tuesday, April 30, it ran a videofrom social media depicting Guaidó, accompanied by opposition leader Leopoldo López, along with some armed uniformed men. The video claimed they were all at the La Carlota military airfield in eastern Caracas, which Guaidó said had been "liberated." According to CNN, he was addressing "thousands of supporters" while urging the rest of the Venezuelan military to join the coup.

But as Michael Fox and other observersnoted, CNN didn't show those "thousands" of supportersbecause there were none.

Guaidó and his "deserting" soldiers quickly left the scene as government troops headed their way. López later that day sought asylum for himself and family at the Chilean and eventually the Spanish embassy. Two dozen deserted soldiers sought asylum in the Brazilian embassy.

There are two possibilities here: Either CNN's US-based editors were lied to by their Caracas reporters they knew their story of the takeover of a military airfield and of of thousands of protesters on the scene was a hoax.

CNN's standards of accuracy were further discredited by its May 5 claimthat:

pressure is mounting on Maduro to step down, following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaidó over him for president.

In fact, Guaidó was not even a candidate in the May 2018 (not January 2019) presidential elections; Maduro won that race with 68 percent of the vote. The New York Times hasn't done any better. On the day of the fake coup, the Times reported, in an unusual unbylined article headed "Venezuela Crisis: Guaidó Calls for Uprising as Clashes Erupt":

"Today, brave soldiers, brave patriots, brave men attached to the Constitution have followed our call," Mr. Guaidó said in a video posted on social media, speaking from Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base, a military airport in Caracas known as La Carlota.

The "newspaper of record" either made no effort to check its reporters' "facts," or went along deliberately with the charade that Washington's hand-picked "legitimate president" Guaidó was actually speaking from a "liberated" military airfield, when he was really only standing on a highway overpass outside the airfield"

For the rest of this story by DAVE LINDORFF, which is the lead item at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/failed-coup-actually-a-corporate-fake-news-story-designed-to-trick-venezuelan-soldiers-and-the-public/

Authors Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Authors Bio:

Dave Lindorff, winner of a 2019 "Izzy" Award for Outstanding Independent Journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).