Last year, British journalist and former diplomat Craig Murray provided valuable reports from Lebanon, documenting — among other things — death and destruction brought by Israel’s military. Now, Murray is on the ground in Venezuela, doing what he did in Lebanon last year — providing access to information that tends to be filtered out or distorted in much reporting.
Indeed, in his first report from Venezuela that he posted at his website on Monday, Murray provided, based on his crisscrossing of the nation’s capital, an account that the situation there is very different from what is commonly reported. “I have now been in Caracas for 48 hours and the contrast between what I have seen, and what I had read in the mainstream media, could not be more stark,” stated Murray to begin his report. Expanding on this observation, Murray wrote later in his report:
Pretty well everything that I have read by Western journalists which can be immediately checked – checkpoints, armed political gangs, climate of fear, shortages of food and goods – turns out to be an absolute lie. I did not know this before I came. Possibly neither did you. We both do now.
As in Lebanon last year, Murray is set to provide a view into matters much of the media is not interested in sharing with people around the world. Murray explained in his report:
When I was in Lebanon a year ago, the mainstream media were entirely absent as Israel devastated Dahiya, the Bekaa Valley, and Southern Lebanon, because it was a narrative they did not want to report.
Disgracefully, the only time the BBC entered Southern Lebanon was from the Israeli side, embedded with the IDF.
The BBC, Guardian or New York Times simply will not send a correspondent to Caracas because the reality is so starkly different from the official narrative.
To be more informed about what is happening in Venezuela, it would be a good practice to check periodically Murray’s website where he is planning to post more written and video reports in the coming weeks.
