PressEthic

The NY Times had this to say:

About all that Belkis Bejaran had ever heard about the firebrand leader of faraway Venezuela was that the combative populist often hurled verbal insults at President Bush. Then this week, with a sort of bemused gratitude, she heard that Hugo Chávez's government, which sits on the Western Hemisphere's biggest oil supply, would provide cheap heating fuel to her landlord, reducing her monthly rent this winter by more than $100.

"I find it weird, because he's always talking about the administration," said Ms. Bejaran, 38. "Then, all of a sudden I heard he was going to provide oil for the South Bronx. I was surprised."

In a gesture combining generosity and high theater, officials from an American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company announced today from a chilly corner of Mount Hope that they would sell heating oil at a 40 percent discount to 75 apartment buildings in the Bronx, benefiting 8,000 low-income residents in what is shaping up to be a cold, fuel-guzzling winter.

Reuters wasn’t as subtle with its characterization of Chavez. It got right into to what most news accounts implied were his political intentions in the first paragraph: "Venezuelan 'humanitarian aid' arrived in The Bronx on Tuesday, leaving some residents of one of New York's poorest neighborhoods happy to be able to heat their homes and others wondering if they were political pawns."

Strangely, the two page article didn’t get mention anything else about those curious residents until the last sentence, which quotes a woman as saying “I think it's political, and who knows what it will mean for us. You have to think about what is good, and what could be bad about it.”

Reuters also took the liberty of calling Chavez a “socialist”—a term that, like “communist” or “anarchist,” can imply a number of outdated stereotypes when used out of context. The Daily News and NY Times stuck with the less loaded—and more accurate—“populist.” The BBC, on the other hand, simply called him “a vocal critic of President Bush.”

Sounds about right, considering the leftward tilt of Europe’s political spectrum.