Media Critiques
According to an article in Censored 2003, the United States foreign policy in Colombia has led to the deaths of thousands of citizens in the country.
By training leaders of paramilitary groups and fumigating drug crops, the United States is linked to many deaths in Colombia. Tony White, a professor of history at Sonoma State University, said the United States is not fighting a “war on drugs” in Colombia but is protecting American mining, oil and logging interests in the area. The U.S. is spending $7.5 billion in the counter-narcotics initiative known as Plan Colombia.
In the past year, local Houston news media KTRK, channel 13, had only two reports related to Colombia. The news station’s website gave more coverage of Colombia in Spanish, but offered no option to view the information in English. Even so, the 10 articles in Spanish do not connect the United States to the human rights abuses in Colombia that the article in Censored 2003 discusses.
In addition to financial aid, the U.S. contributed military aid for the Colombian army. Many of these soldiers, trained by the U.S., became leaders in paramilitary forces that murder Colombian citizens.
Monthly Review, another alternative media source, had two articles in the 2003 that said the United States had an ulterior motive in dealing with Colombia. A June 2003 article in Monthly Review, not based on the situation in Colombia, mentioned the ever-growing presence of U.S. troops in foreign lands.
Meanwhile, the website for the monthly magazine by the North American Congress on Latin America listed more than 100 articles written about U.S. intervention in Colombia in the past two years.
Winifred Tate said the US anti-drug efforts connect to the chaos and violence in countries that were aided by the U.S. before.
Although The Progressive only had one article this year about the kidnapping of Americans in Colombia, the magazine based in Madison, Wisconsin, published over 20 articles on the United States’ position in the country in the past three years.
The title of one of these articles, written in 1999, said everything the mainstream media did not: “Stop the War On Colombia.”
At least three of the NACLA articles emphasized the fact that the United States’ “war on drugs” has not stopped the flow of drugs into America, nor has it slowed the import.
Mainstream media is hiding the truth from audiences by covering only a portion of the real situation. With most people paying attention to mainstream media, news like KTRK bias the public’s understanding of global issues.
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