The BS Side of the Story

Gad! Greg Allen was in Miami and figured he'd just turn on the microphone and let the sons and daughters of the Honduran oligarchy have a go at it. All opinions aired were pro-coup and anti-Zelaya. Here are a sample:

• "What happened in Honduras was not a coup."
• "...it was not a coup; it was a constitutional action to prevent the president from trying to seek reelection indefinitely like other presidents in Latin America."
• "we obey the law and we can not allow the international community to tell Hondurans what to do - imposing the return of former president Zelaya."
• "...the only people that actually know what the internal problems of the country are are those people who know. This president [Zelaya, not Bush] is a criminal, has been a criminal, and has only made bad things to our country and government."

To put a professional sheen on this rant-fest Allen turned to Marifeli Pérez-Stable of Florida International University (and the Miami Herald). She made sure to ignore the legal issues of the coup and instead hammered on merging Zelaya with Chavez of Venezuela:

"In Honduras the Chavez model has been stopped. I really think that it has been stopped. It's not going to fly."

The problem with this piece by Allen is not that he talked with and even aired some of the rather contorted viewpoints of these Hondurans in Miami - but there was no informative context whatsoever. I kept wondering about the class makeup of the people in this interview and wondering how many of them (or their parents) were active in the right-wing human rights abuses of the 1980s. I assumed they were connected to the very rich in Honduras, but Allen's report never spelled this out.