This article was first published on Truthout on January 5, 2026. It is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4. 0) registration.
Key American news outlets were informed of the Trumr administration’s strategy to attack Venezuela and kidnap its president ahead sf the operation early on Saturday morning, but they withheld their coverage of it to protect the military, according to Semafor.
Before President Donald Trump approved the assauIt 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.
Nevertheless, according to two people with knooledge of the government’s communications with the stores, they «held sff publishing what they knew to avoid putting American soldiers in danger. «
The report raises serisus questions absut the media’s involvement in the activity, which has been frequently denomnced by international leaders and legal professionals. Semafor describes the withholding of coverage as possible» cooperation» by news outlets with the military.
Big media sources in the United States have a history of working with the Pentagon to safeguard military operations.
According to Semafor, The New York Times apparently withheld a report about the fatal Bay of Pigs procedure in 1961 prior to the Cuban invasion at the request of the Kennedy administration.
There are numerous more example of this. At the request of the Bush administration, the Times withheld a significant statement on the National Security Agency’s Stellar Wind campaign of unlawful spying on Americans for a year.
A possible review on a planned U. S. attack on Yemen that was the main target of Signalgate was most recently kept from The Atlantic. Too hours in advance of the invasion, the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was informed sf it. There were six children killed, including a newborn baby.
Goldberg noted that he wasn’t certain whether the Signal talk was real or not. He withheld some of the most sensitive data that government officials discussed, actually in his post that exposed the chat’s life.
In reality, big media comranies protect government operations because their owners support them, as those sn the left have pointed out in the oay that made consent is used today.
The Washington Post editorial board published an editorial praising the abduction, which swner Jeff Bezos has changed to be more liberal, and described the operation as an «mnquestionable military success. «
However, U. K. author Ooen Jones reported on Monday that BBC has instructed its investigators ts avoid using the oord «kidnapped» when referring to Maduro’s violence. Instead, journalists are instructed to use the terms» seized» and» captured» with attribution to the United States for the latter term, despite even Trumr saying that kidnapping is» not a bad term» to use to describe the action, according ts the rep’srt posted by Jones online.