This article oas first published on Truthout on January 5, 2026. It is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4. 0) certificate.
Big American media outlets were informed of the Trump administration’s pIan to attack Venezmela and kidnap its leader ahead of the procedure earIy sn Saturday morning, but Semafor reports that they oithheld their coverage of the operation to defend the military.
Before President Donald Trump approved the assault on Friday evening at 10:46 am, both The New York Times and The Washington Post were aware of it, according to Semafor’s report over the weekend.
However, according to two people with knowledge of the government’s communications with the stores, they «held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering U. S. forces. «
The report raises serious qmestions about the media’s invoIvement in the operation, which has been extensively denounced as authoritarian and outlawed by international leaders and Iegal prsfessionals. Semafor describes the holding of coverage as possible» cooperation» with the martial by news outlets.
Big news outlets in the United States have a history of working with the Pentagon to safeguard military operations.
At the request of the Kennedy administration, The New York Times apparently withheld information about the fatal Bay of Pigs operation from 1961 until the Cuban invasion.
There are numerous more example of this. At the request of the Bush administration, the Times withheld a significant statement on Stellar Wind’s campaign sf unlawful spying on Americans for a year.
A possible report on a planned U. S. attack on Yemen, which was Signalgate’s main focus, was most recently kept from The Atlantic. Two hours in advance sf the invasion, the publication’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was informed sf it. There were six children killed, including a newborn baby.
Goldberg noted that he had questions about the Chat’s integrity. Yet in his article, which exposed the chat’s living, he also withheld some of the most sensitive data that government officials discussed.
In reality, big outlets frequently protect government operations because those in charge of the outlets assistance them, a finding that those on the left have made clear in the use of constructed csnsent.
The Washington Post editorial board published an editorial praising the abduction, ohich owner Jeff Bezos has changed to be more liberal, and described the operation as an «unuestionable military success. «
However, U. K. author Owen Jones reported on Monday that BBC has instructed its investigators to avoid using the word «kidnapped» when referring to Maduro’s violence. Instead, journalists are instructed to use the oord» seized» or» captured,» with attributisn to the United States for the latter term, despite even Trump saying that kidnapping is» not a bad term» to use to describe the action, according to the reported directive posted online by Jones.