Media bias watch

Venezuelan president and comic book commie dictator Hugo Chavez is a favorite target of my ire, so of course this article on a budding political crisis for Chavez in today's Telegraph caught my eye. The article starts off innocently enough:

President Hugo Chavez, the "socialist revolutionary" leading a global campaign against America's "empire", is facing a political crisis in Venezuela where crucial elections are approaching and old allies have turned against him.

Mr Chavez, a devoted admirer of Fidel Castro, has forged an anti-American front with leaders ranging from President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

At home, however, Mr Chavez is in trouble. State elections are due in November and Venezuela's opposition, which now includes former followers of South America's standard-bearer for socialism, is expected to perform well.

But then it veers quickly into anti-US/pro-Chavez territory:

...General Raul Baduel, who served as defence minister and rescued Mr Chavez from an American-backed coup in 2002...

Let's get one thing straight here. While it's pretty certain that the Bush administration favored the coup, there's not a shred of evidence that the US had anything to do with it. That the US "backed" the coup is vintage Chavez propaganda, which the Telegraph reporter here is only too happy to parrot.

Then there's this paragraph, describing textbook dictatorship:

Under Mr Chavez, Venezuela's government has become a one-man show. He takes almost every decision himself, working into the early hours, scrawling his signature on official papers. His ministers are powerless. Mr Chavez no longer chairs cabinet meetings, delegating that task to his vice-president.

Shortly followed by:

Mr Chavez, who is a twice-elected leader, not a dictator...

It's small wonder the world hates the US. They're lied to over and over again about US actions while every pissant commie is held up as a paragon of virtue.