TAKEAWAY: The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez finally lost his battle with cancer. Here is a sampling of how newspapers played the controversial leader’s death.
It was a death announced, even though we still do not know what type of cancer killed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Wonder if we ever will?
Chavez died Tuesday, March 5, and soon the news was everywhere,
with TV commentators, bloggers and Tweeters either lamenting the “loss of a leader of the poor” or forecasting a better future for the oil rich South American nation “now that this oppressive tyrant is gone”.
Whether one liked or despised Chavez—and that is how feelings usually went for the late President—-his death is likely to bring swift and dramatic changes to Venezuela, not to mention to the balance of power in Latin America, and, especially to Cuba, a country with which Hugo Chavez had established close ties, where he went for cancer treatment, and where his oil generosity helped to keep Cuban’s economy afloat.
Chavez in the front pages
The pages below, primarily from Spanish language newspapers, reflect the impact of the news for Latin America and Spain.
Every time news of an event of this magnitude breaks, editors tend to offer the first day headline, as if the other platforms in the media quartet did not exist. It continues to surprise me how many of these newspapers carried a headline that read: Chavez dies, or Chavez died.
However, there are some which managed to accept the proper role of print in the digital age, offering us headlines that projected the story beyond the obvious. Among those:
Pagina 12, Argentina: headline translation—Down in History
Correio Brazilense, Brazil: headline reads—End of an Era
La Nacion, Peru: headline translation: A new era in Venezuela
La Voz, Venezuela—La Voz; headline, The President Leaves a Permanent Legacy
La Prensa, Honduras—headline, The Left is Orphaned
El Universal, Colombia: headline, Venezuela without Chavez
Loved or despised
Spain
Venezuela
Brazil
Colombia
Venezuela
Chile
El Salvador
Costa Rica
Portugal
Ecuador
France
United Kingdom
Italy
Cuba
Canada
Mexico
Ecuador
USA
Of related interest:
Rodrigo Fino, of our Garcia Media Latinamerica office in Buenos Aires, devotes his blog today to the death of Chavez and how the media covered it.
For more go here (in Spanish):
http://www.garcia-media.com.ar/blog/post/portadas-y-mas-portadas/208%0A#dise%C3%B1o
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