Massive defections from radical leftist party!

Or maybe not.

We recently wrote about the curious way Proceso Digital chooses to cover LIBRE and the candidacy of Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Their item, which really should have been labeled an opinion piece, is hysterical. Not hysterical funny, mind you: hysterical standing in a parking lot and screaming hysterical.

The screaming starts below the digital fold, in paragraph 8 (all of the bold-faced type and italics that follow are in the original; no emphasis has been added):

Libre and its mini-competitor, the UD-Faper alliance, have in common their support for 21st century socialism, their position against the system, and their hatred of what they call the “poderes fácticos” [roughly, powers that be], promising to push for a constitutional assembly that will succeed in changing the present “state of things”.

They are also followers of the departed ex-president Hugo Chavéz and of his successor Nicolás Maduro and the rest of the governments of the Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas (Alba).

Oh my. 21st century socialism, bringing Chavez back from the dead, no less. Amazingly, the article gets more over-wrought. A final section headlined simply "Institutions" reads in full:

Polls underline that on the level of party membership, the National Party is the party with the most backing, followed by the Liberal and in a distant third place, Libre.

But that membership has to awaken partisan fervor of followers that must translate itself into an intention to vote.

In any case, the Honduran center right will participate in elections where for the first time its supremacy is endangered along with the future of the century-old political system of two parties and support for the system.

The division of the center right vote, as occurred in Venezuela and Nicaragua, could give place to the rise and consolidation of the left and of a hegemonic model that they will create afterward with the same tools of power.

The apocalypse is apparently coming, unless the forces of center right stability get motivated and turn out.

This would be funny if it weren't that it is acceptable as "news" in Honduras' most modern news medium.

The hysteria here would be merely curious if it were not part of a concerted reactionary press attempt to understate what the viability of the candidacy of Xiomara Castro-- and the less viable, but still much stronger than expected candidacy of Salvador Nasralla-- actually is telling us about the Honduran political landscape.

Yes, party membership is highest in the two traditional parties. But recent polling by the Honduran NGO CESPAD indicates that only 58% of Partido Nacional members, and only 50% of Liberal Party members, intend to vote for their party's nominee. CESPAD describes this as a "rupture" of traditional party loyalty, with only 31% of those polled in July saying they would not think of voting outside their declared party.

It isn't a mystery why things are changing, either. CESPAD July polling included two amazing responses to questions about what respondents feel needs to happen. Almost three quarters-- 72.9%-- responded that changes needed to be "radical and in all areas".

Seventy-five percent of respondents said they wanted to see a new Constitutional Assembly write a new Constitution for Honduras. CESPAD notes these respondents are not a uniform ideological block: rather, support for radical change, crystallized in the desire for a new constitution, crosses the spectrum of those they polled.

Will one of the two traditional parties win this election? Maybe. After all, there are pragmatics involved in getting out the vote, in poll watching, in making sure your voters are motivated and not intimidated. But it is not a sure thing, and that is legitimate news.

The least likely thing we would expect is any flight back to the traditional Liberal Party by LIBRE supporters, seeing their candidate in the lead. Yet making that claim is another of the strategies Proceso Digital is trying out in their advocacy against the electoral flow, masquerading as news.

Just before they broke out into bold face and italicized attempts to attach a corpse to Xiomara Castro, Proceso Digital's anonymous writer produced this extraordinary paragraph:

The polls support analysts in that the electoral tent of the traditional left, fused with those that abandoned the Partido Liberal, makes up approximately 25-30% [of the electorate]. A base that in recent days has moved, with massive returns of LIBRE supporters to the white-and-red hosts [a reference to the Liberal Party colors, vs. the red and black of LIBRE]. 

Talk about burying your lede! Massive defections from LIBRE to Mauricio Villeda's candidacy? please, tell me more! Starting with your source for this actual news item?

The same claim was published in an article on September 14 in El Heraldo. There, it has a source:  the Liberal Party, which says that between 500 and 1500 party activists will soon be announced as returning to the fold, having not found LIBRE congenial.

"Massive returns" is, obviously, not quantified. But even in the diminished Liberal Party, 1500 people is hardly "massive".

As we previously reported, 31% of the electorate is not registered with any party. The Partido Nacional reportedly was the choice of 32%, LIBRE of 14%, and the Partido Liberal, 15% of the electorate. During the last election cycle, the electorate was projected at about 4.3 million eligible voters (only 2.1 million actually cast votes). That would put Liberal Party membership somewhere upwards of 600,000. If 1500 party activists shift from LIBRE back to the Partido Liberal, that would be a net gain of around-- well, let's say rather less than 1%, at the expense of a similar minuscule percentage of LIBRE's membership.

But it sure sounds good, doesn't it? especially when Liberal Party officials explain that these returnees were distressed, not by their inability to achieve prominent leadership positions, but because they were shocked to realize that LIBRE had an "ideology of the extreme and radical left".

The real news here is and remains that a third party in Honduras has managed to equal the membership of one of the two traditional parties, and is currently polling in the lead of all parties. Whether LIBRE or the Anti-Corruption Party wins the election, the level of support they have gained is evidence that the dissatisfied Honduran electorate has found a new way to express its disenchantment-- not just refraining from voting, but aspiring to vote for insurgent candidates and parties.

Which is indeed a menace to the status quo.

How do you cover a new progressive party in Honduras?

With misleading critique masquerading as news, it would appear.

We previously commented on the relative lack of reporting in Honduran media of LIBRE's actual positions, and Xiomara's campaign events. We have hesitated to give more space to the odd way she is being covered, but it is time, now.

Proceso Digital, an online Honduran news outlet, published a piece on Friday about the fragmented voter landscape in Honduras. In the third paragraph, after noting that LIBRE is in the lead in all the presidential polls, they describe the presidential candidate as "keeping herself practically unknown, sheltered behind the figure of her husband, ex-president Manuel Zelaya". (We will return to some of the more outrageous parts of this "news article" in another post.)

What caught our attention was the phrase "casi anonimo" (practically unknown)-- an active link in the story. We followed it, and landed on a previous Proceso Digital story, published July 16, headlined "Xiomara Castro Newly Absent from Public Events".

The "public event" in July was the selection, by lottery, of places on the ballot for each party. Proceso Digital noted in passing that Salvador Nasralla also absented himself from this political show; but it was the LIBRE party candidate who came in for criticism for not being there. Both of the new parties sent delegates, so it wasn't a boycott of this step in the process. The story tried to make it seem like evidence of a pattern of hiding Xiomara to avoid public scrutiny, so that she remains "practically unknown".

Which is kind of amazing, when you think about it, since Xiomara became visible as a political actor through the most public political events of Honduras' recent history: the overthrow of the legally elected government of Honduras in 2009, and the sustained public protest that followed and was brutally suppressed by the de facto regime. Video footage shows her, in early July 2009, declaring that she couldn't stay safely in refuge while the people were giving their lives to the cause. By October 2009, public polling was showing Xiomara Castro de Zelaya with the highest approval rating of any public figure in Honduras.

So, she is hardly anonymous, unknown, or simply standing in the shadow of her husband. She is representing the positions of LIBRE, which are continuations (or extensions) of policy directions of the Zelaya administration. And despite the claim that she is not appearing in public, even with the Honduran press being less than fair and balanced, we can reconstruct a clear record of regular public events where she has announced or discussed LIBRE policy directions.

In fact, the same article complaining about her (scheduled) absence from a formal event (at which her party was suitably represented) reported that Xiomara Castro issued a position statement the same week: that she would send the military back to their quarters if elected. Cholusat Sur covered her statement on July 16:

in her government, the military would return to their quarters because their function is not to go out in the streets to patrol, their function is to protect national sovereignty, combat drug trafficking, and prevent contraband arms traffic, what should be done, asserted Xiomara, is to make it possible for the National Police to really dedicate themselves to the security of the people.

On August 4, Tiempo, in coverage of a campaign event in Tocoa in the Department of Colon, noted that she reiterated to supporters there her plan to demilitarize policing and send the armed forces to guard the border. At a campaign event in early September held in Siguatepeque, Department of Comayagua, she announced a plan to form a new national advisory body on culture, and received a formal statement in support of her campaign from a coalition of Honduran writers and artists.

In recent campaign appearances, Xiomara Castro has emphasized the need for support of the rural agrarian population. On September 9, she called for extension of credit at low interest to rural farmers and small businesses, while also restating her intent to remove the military from civilian policing. This was during a tour of small towns in the state dominated by San Pedro Sula, the Department of Cortes, Santa Cruz de Yojoa, San Francisco de Yojoa, San Antonio and Potrerillos.

What is notable in these campaign events is not just the kinds of audiences she is addressing: the venues are places outside the two major cities, including locations (Tocoa, Siguatepeque) that are centers of rural organizing.

So where is Xiomara anonymous and invisible, as Proceso Digital claims? In addition to the lottery for ballot position, the Honduran press reported her declining to attend events of the Chamber of Commerce in Tegucigalpa, and other events planned by the Consejo Hondureña de la Empresa Privada (COHEP).

The actual story here, then, is that a candidate running for president on a ticket emphasizing social justice and seeking popular support, who has no reason to think the business community will back her, is choosing events where her message may motivate voters. And she is using those appearances to publicize a consistent set of policy positions. Pretty outrageous, isn't it?

Proceso Digital: Advocacy Journalism?

Proceso Digital, the online digital newspaper that boasts of being run by professional journalists, demonstrated yet again the worst possible example of why Honduran journalism is in trouble.

The provocation? covering the report of the OAS High Commission on Honduras.

As a reminder: Proceso Digital is run by Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya, a professor of Journalism at UNAH, and Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga, a graduate of the UNAH journalism program (self descriptions here).

All the other Honduran daily newspapers, even the pro-coup ones, provided credible reporting on the content of the OAS report.

Tiempo ran yesterday with the 7-point conclusion of the report, and today covered Arturo Corrales's discussion of possible scenarios for dismissal of the charges against Zelaya.

El Heraldo also covered the conclusions of the report yesterday, and today led with a story on Lobo Sosa's government's interpretation of the report as "favorable". La Prensa mirrored the coverage in El Heraldo, as usual.

La Tribuna covered the conclusions yesterday, and today reproduced the entire report, minus the annexes, without comment.

At Proceso Digital, in contrast, the journalism professors and their staff produced multiple articles, one factual article, and one that suffers from their usual excess of editorializing.

In the National news section, the headline was "Lobo describes the OAS report as "very positive". It contains good journalistic writing, quoting Lobo and Canahuati on the OAS High Commission report. In the Politics section, however, the headline is "Insulza strengthens impunity in Honduras". What follows bears no resemblance to actual reporting; this piece is laced with factual errors, as anyone who read the version of the report published in La Tribuna can plainly see.

The article starts with an opinion, a point of view, a take on the report, and a factual error:

Impunity was strengthened in Honduras with the report of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, which asks that the legal cases against ex President Manuel Zelaya and his collaborators be laid aside by the judicial system of the country.

The lie is that the report is by José Miguel Insulza; it is not. The report, as noted in every other Honduran newspaper, is by the High Commission appointed by Insulza at the direction of the OAS General Assembly. If you cannot get the basic fact of authorship right, how can you call yourselves journalists?

The next problem, apparent to those who have read the entire OAS report, is that the report does not ask that the judicial system lay aside the case against Zelaya: it states in the conclusions that the cases against Zelaya are politically motivated (as determined by a jurist consultant to the High Commission) and that they should be ended. The discussion in the body of the report describes at least three different scenarios by which the case might be ended in ways consistent with Honduran law, only one of which is judicial nullification.

The next sentence of the Proceso Digital article states:

Insulza asked that the legal cases initiated against Zelaya not follow their normal process as a condition by which Honduras could ask for its reintegration in the OAS.

That is also false. Insulza made no such demand. The report, by the High Commission, not Insulza, reached some conclusions, among which dropping the legal cases against Zelaya because they are so clearly politically motivated was one, but it made no recommendations whatsoever about the reintegration of Honduras into the OAS. It explicitly left that as an exercise for each member state to decide.

The next sentence, surprisingly, is not erroneous.

But in the next sentence, the authors return to form, writing

Among the conditions placed on the country, the most unusual is to free Zelaya and his followers of the responsibility to respond to the justice for their excesses, while also not guaranteeing that the government of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa can designate a representative to the OAS, because this power is authorized by the votes of the governments of the continent and many of them, with the power to block, have let it be known that they will not recognize the present arrangement.

Opinion; the use of the word "unusual" is the clue, but then it goes off into left field with the rant about guaranteeing Honduras a representative in the OAS.

Once again, people, the OAS High Commission report makes recommendations to improve democracy in Honduras; it does not make them the conditions of reintegration into the OAS. The report was never meant to make a recommendation, only to inform the OAS General Assembly so that it could better make up its own mind, each country individually, about whether, when, and under what conditions to reincorporate Honduras into the OAS. The report was never meant to promise reintegration, or representation; that is the prerogative of the OAS General Assembly, by at least a 2/3 vote in favor of reintegration.

So most of the above is just a red herring with no actual relevance. It shows either willful misdirection or a complete lack of understanding of what the OAS High Commission was charged with doing.

I could go on deconstructing the rest of the article but it's long and just as bad as the examples already cited above; certainly not their best work.

I have to conclude that these two journalists who, to be fair, often do fairly factual reporting, have confused journalism with blogging or editorial writing. What is written in this story would be suitable (but still factually wrong) for an editorial page or a blog, but has no place in something claiming to be a news article, digital or otherwise. As professional journalists, you need to write more responsibly.