A year and a half ago, Red Pepper published a piece criticising the reporting of The Guardian’s Rory Carroll on Venezuela. They noted that:

In less than two years of reporting on Venezuela, Carroll has written an astonishing 79 articles with Chavez’s name in the headline alone. It is predictable then that the allegations against the US are presented by Carroll as yet another example of Chavez’s quirky and paranoid persona; the latest in a long running feud between the ‘self styled revolutionary’ (as Carroll repeatedly refers to him) and ‘the superpower’ he calls ‘the empire’.

Sunday’s Observer saw – you guessed it – another piece on Venezuela. Did it have ‘Chávez’ in the title? You bet! Was it a collection of regurgitated half-truths, the type that even the New York Times is (by now) a little embarassed to publish? Why, of course! And who was the journalist? (This is getting a little boring.)

Rory Carroll’s previous reporting assignment was Iraq. I can find no evidence anywhere that he speaks a word of Arabic.