Monday, January 11, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI and Honduras

The pope in his "state of the world" message to diplomats accredited to the Vatican said:
I hope that Honduras, after a period of uncertainty and unrest, will move towards a recovery of normal political and social life.
It's a statement that most people in Honduras might accept, although some would question the "normality" of the political and social life before the coup. It might have been normal for corrupt countries with radical social inequality and massive poverty; but it can not be called a "norm" for just social and political life.

However, if you read the report in today's La Prensa you would note quotes from what the pope said about violence and terrorism in the paragraphs in the news article before and after they noted the pope's quote on Honduras. The quotes are not related to Honduras and are not anywhere near the sentence about Honduras. But the article might make one think that the pope was condemning terrorism and violence in Honduras.

This is typical of La Prensa and most of the press here in Honduras. I wrote about La Prensa a few weeks ago in my blog entry on reconciliation. Most of the newspapers are owned and controlled by the oligarchy that is behind the coup. Only El Tiempo, owned by the multi-millionaire Jaime Rosenthal, has been somewhat balanced in its reporting and Rosenthal has critiqued the coup.

This is the press we have here in Honduras.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And Tiempo has been very carefully not reporting much about politics lately.

The coup media is scary, the way it takes every story, forces it into a mold of either "See, we were right." or "Our enemies are awful." As my co-blogger MEC says about right-wingism, what the coup media deliver is anti-truth: not merely a lie, but taking the truth, turning it inside out and shaking it.

--Charles