Talk:Franklin Brito

El Universal
WP:NOTFORUM, but... if anyone has an explanation why El Universal's "chronology" of the Brito protest from 2004 to his death omits virtually everthing between 2004 and December 09, I'd like to hear it. Rd232 talk 09:30, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably because that's when he was taking his stuff to various courts and agencies and getting his charges thrown out for being without evidence. (See ). I'm guessing they don't want people to look too closely at his actual case, and want them to focus more on the fact that he died. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 19:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality and reliability of sources
Much of the government arguments come from the article in a ggovernment news agency Agencia Venezolana de Noticias. At the very least, I think that this should be attributed, as that is certainly not a neutral source, to say the least. I am not sure if this source is reliable enough (WP:REDFLAG) to justify the "alleged" word used in lead. Also, half of the lead is now the summary of the government viewpoint - I don't think that fits our due weight policy. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:31, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that a government news agency is a reliable source for the government's viewpoints. And the word "alleged" is totally adequate. There was simply no land confiscation, and if El Universal et al, wish to call a border dispute an "expropriation" (without any evidence), that's all the more reason to not consider them reliable for this issue. In fact, Brito took over his neighbors' land. He was given land, and wasn't satisfied with how much he got and demanded that he get his neighbors' land too. The dispute was actually over the borders of his land, not his land being confiscated. He considered the land he didn't get from his neighbors as rightfully his, and occupied by other people, thus "expropriated" from him (even though it was never legally his in the first place...) The government has been very open with their records on this issue, and you can see what actually happened as Brito went through various official channels to try to get more land. This is why, as Rd232 pointed out, El Universal and the other opposition papers are not showing the 2005-2009 period in their timelines -- because this is when Brito was getting his baseless charges thrown out for lack of evidence, and they don't want people to look at the actual case. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 19:21, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly. Basically, it appears Brito claimed part of his farm had been taken over by neighbours, but INTI and courts repeatedly said the disputed territory was not part of his legal claim. I can only surmise that Brito considered his farm to extend beyond his legal title for reasons unknown. That the opposition sources apparently aren't interested in the details doesn't help ensure a full and complete picture. (But then, the government sources haven't addressed the "getting fired" or "reneging on promises" claims either. Albeit the latter is from the Economist, which claims the farm was 250-acres and implies all of it was lost, and no other source does, which tells you something.) Rd232 talk 20:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * How do you figure the govt view is half the lead? I make it one sentence. Rd232 talk 20:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * "The government maintained that his series of unsuccessful legal challenges and dramatic public protests pertained to land legally owned by his neighbours, and that his final hunger strike came after the disputed land titles had been withdrawn from his neighbours as a humanitarian gesture." - thgat sentence is about half of the lead's length. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would be the sentence, which I make (currently) 44 words out of 104. This is a problem how? (And you only get 44 by counting the entire sentence as government view, but a substantial part of it is fact.) Rd232 talk 06:53, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, out of curiosity, if el governmiento didn’t expropriate his land, and el governmiento says that he always had title to his 716ish acres, why then, in a country with a per capita income of $13,500, did it offer him a settlement of $230,000? I’m not trying to surmise anything, I just have an interest in the details so I can have a full and complete picture. Hammersbach (talk) 02:57, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I also have trouble understanding why somebody would go to such an extreme after loosing just a small part of his land... something doesn't make sense here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the guy seems like a nut. Not only was his land not taken, but the land was given to him by the government in the first place. And he was also given enormous amounts of technical assistance and credit. Not to mention that he was being a bit of a hypocrite, considering that after getting hundreds of acres all to himself, for free, he was fighting for years to prevent his neighbors from having land to support their families. Anyhow, it's really sad that the opposition media exploited him and let him die to achieve their ends, rather than working to defuse the situation. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 03:41, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what the relevance of average per capita income is for a specific case of what was allegedly offered as damages for something or other relating to a land ownership dispute. I can say that it appears Brito had title to 290 hectares; in 1937, 60% of farmers were classified as "small farmers" for having less than 10 hectares. In addition, average farm size for recent land redistribution is 11.5 hectares . So this was a sizable farm. In addition this says that the land reform programme didn't involve private land until 2005 (before that, it was all state-owned land). Since the dispute dates to 2003 or even 2002, that would seem to definitively squash the claim that it was an expropriation carried out in the course of the national land reform programme. Rd232 talk 09:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The relevance of the average per capita income is to just show how big, relatively, the settlement offer was. This would be relevantly analogous to, oh say, comparing the size of the farm that Brito had title to vs. that of a “small farmer”.  If one can see the relevance in one comparison than it should follow that the other would be readily apparent. Hammersbach (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Comparing annual income with alleged compensation for asset issues is questionable in a way that comparing asset sizes is not. Same as you don't compare one person's bank balance with another's annual income. Rd232 talk 15:46, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that this settlement is something we should look into. The only English-language source I'm able to find right now mentioning it is the Economist, which has a history of lying and taking things out of context when reporting editorializing on Venezuela. I'd like to find some more information on this from more reliable, trustworthy sources. I'm not saying the settlement didn't happen (usually they just remove context to send a misleading message, reserving the lies for only cases where it's absolutely necessary), but just that there is probably more to it. I'll start digging through Spanish-language papers and see what I can turn up on it. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 03:41, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Aren't there any more Venezuelan government propaganda press releases or new sheets to use as a source? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 04:32, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've yet to understand why people who have a problem with using press releases from the Venezuelan government, do not have a problem using press releases from the United States government, or newswire reports from multi-billion dollar corporations with vested financial interests in Venezuela. It's not as if the latter two aren't biased and publishing with ulterior motives. Nowhere did I suggest that we use Venezuelan government press releases exclusively. I'm just saying that calling those into question, while not calling into question other governments, or corporate publishing houses owned by the billionaires that Chavez is screwing, is a bit naive (or dishonest). All I am suggesting is that we find other sources that are talking about this "settlement", so that we can better understand what it was all about -- preferably sources which don't consistently take things out of context, lie, and manipulate statistics when reporting on Venezuela. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 05:28, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Along those lines, no source would be reliable, everybody can be pressured by something, or have some interests. Government news outlets will always have their biases, sure, but those biases are correlated with the level of democracy, corruption and government responsibility; in authoritarian regimes their reliability is much lower then elsewhere. Like it or not, The Economist is a well respected news outlet, with a proper editorial policy and a reputation for fact checking (not that it is perfect). We can take it to WP:RSN, but I expect that The Economist is a more reliable news source than the Venezuelan government. That said, I do think that the current article is relatively; the only part I do not like is the attribution of The Economist - I do not see a particular reason for it. PS. I stubbed Instituto Nacional de Tierras, perhaps some Spanish-speaking editors could help expand it? There seem to be next to no English sources on it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:58, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Along those lines, no source would be reliable. -- No. What I'm saying is that you don't judge reliability on the faulty assumption that some sources, such as the Venezuelan government, are biased, while the U.S. government and right-wing publications such as the Economist are completely objective about everything. I'm saying that if you claim that the Venezuelan government is unreliable because of bias, then you certainly must do so for the U.S. government and the Economist, both of which are controlled by right-wing billionaires with a clear conflict-of-interest in this particular situation. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Government news outlets will always have their biases, sure, but those biases are correlated with the level of democracy, corruption and government responsibility; in authoritarian regimes their reliability is much lower then elsewhere. -- The government of Venezuela is far more democratic than, for example, the United States government. The U.S. lacks basic democratic freedoms which Venezuelans enjoy, such as recallable elected officials, citizen referenda, proportional representation, community access to mass media, etc. The U.S. also has a much larger percentage of its population in prison (the largest in the world actually). Chavez was democratically elected, by a large margin, in elections that international NGOs and human rights organizations have deemed completely fair. There is no threat of political violence in Venezuela, such as in next-door (U.S. supported) Colombia, where right-wing death squads kill leftist political organizers (interestingly, the Economist does not complain about this). The Venezuelan government doesn't run torture camps like the U.S., nor does it invade foreign nations, where it murders hundreds of thousands of people. So it's hardly reasonable by any metric to call Venezuela "authoritarian", in comparison to the U.S. And furthermore, this is far too subjective a reliability metric, i.e. to allow editors to simply deem "their" government to be "democratic" while deeming other governments "authoritarian" (especially considering that most Americans get their news from corporate-controlled mass media and government press releases), and then banish "authoritarian" government sources. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Like it or not, The Economist is a well respected news outlet, with a proper editorial policy and a reputation for fact checking (not that it is perfect). We can take it to WP:RSN -- I never claimed that the Economist is completely unreliable. I think it's clearly fine to use as a source, in many cases. As I said, their facts are usually accurate. They usually just present them in a misleading way, taken out of context, so as to deliberately present the wrong message to their readers. So what we need is additional sources, which provide this missing context (so that our readers aren't misled). Again -- I'm saying we need additional sources, not that we need to use other sources in place of the Economist (excepting those few cases where the Economist is bold-faced lying). -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * but I expect that The Economist is a more reliable news source than the Venezuelan government. -- Doubtful. I'd say that just like the U.S. State Department is considered to be a reliable source, the Venezuelan government can be a reliable source, but of course should be used in concert with other sources to provide a fuller context. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That said, I do think that the current article is relatively; the only part I do not like is the attribution of The Economist - I do not see a particular reason for it. -- I agree with you that the Economist should not be attributed for uncontested statements of fact, but only for opinions or statements where it conflicts with another reliable source (in which case, both should be attributed). I'll go through the article and remove any of the former type of attribution now. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * To clarify, I explicitly attributed some claims to the Economist because they do not appear in any Venezuelan source that I've found (or, indeed, any other source). It seems odd that only an international paper would have these details, and no-one else. Rd232 talk 18:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * (And not only is it odd that they have details about the government "reneging on its promises", which nobody else has access to, but it's odd that they didn't share the details with us ... Why don't they tell us what these "promises" were or how the governement "reneged" on them?) -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:41, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, after my last post, I went through to look for these statements, and it's pretty clear why you attributed "the government had a habit of reneging on its promises after he ended his hunger strikes". There is no evidence presented, and all of the evidence we do have contradicts this. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:40, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is conveniently vague, not saying what was supposedly promised and allegedly not delivered. I don't see anyone disputing INTI's longstanding claims (December 2009) of agricultural support, of which "deforesting 40 acres of his land" sticks out - because that (= 16 hectares) is bigger than the average land parcel (11.5 ha) received by landless people under Mission Zamora! It's really not clear from the current sources why he acted as he did. Rd232 talk 20:23, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, one explanation might be that the press is on a shorter leash in Venezuela than in the UK. Reporters sans frontiers rates them 114th and 20th in the world respectively when it comes to freedom of the press.  Then there are the those pesky articles 115, 121, and 125 of Venezuela’s Law on Social Responsibility of Radio and Television which make it a crime to say anything considered disrespectful toward legitimate institutions and authorities.  Is saying "the government had a habit of reneging on its promise" disrespectful? Hammersbach (talk) 20:31, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's not get into Ley Resorte issues here - it has its own article. (Suffice I don't think it's a plausible explanation here given how the Venezuelan media is attacking the government over Brito.) I would like to know why no other international source anywhere in the world has picked up these claims. Nor is it obvious why the Venezuelan government wouldn't mention offering Brito $230,000 - "we offered him that, and he still wouldn't settle" seems like additional support for their "we did everything we could" position. Rd232 talk 10:38, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you say anything you want in the UK against the Head of State, really? Not even in the Speakers' Corner, I'm afraid. In fact, you can say in Venezuela a lot of things about Chávez that no one would dare say in the UK about the Queen. JRSP (talk) 20:50, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Care to be more specific and use sources? Here are a few:, , , . You know, I don't usually hear about "critics of the British government being arrested" in UK. Or USA... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:05, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * And there is no evidence for people being arrested in Venezuela for being critics of the government. Certainly there are plenty of examples of people like the wealthy banker Eligio Cedeño, who embezzled state funds, committed fraud, and was involved in illegal currency trading and (gasp) went to jail just like poor Venezuelans do when they commit crimes. Now, being a wealthy banker, he is of course critical of the socialist government that was democratically voted into Venezuela; but he doesn't want democracy; he wants a plutocracy. And the government is not letting him off because he's rich. So anyhow, he's critical of the government for a variety of reasons -- he's a critic. But he's something else as well. He's a criminal. He committed fraud, embezzled state funds, and was involved in illegal currency trading. In the U.S. committing felonies will get you sent to prison. It does in Venezuela too. He wasn't arrested for being a critic. He was arrested for being a criminal. And this is the case for every other "imprisoned government critic case" that the media is parading around. And what's even more fascinating to look into is that even in spite of the extent to which they are willing to bend the truth to conjure up "free speech martyrs" out of criminals, the number of cases they've presented during Chavez' entire time in office is still a fraction of the teachers, journalists, and unionists who get murdered and hacked to pieces with machetes by right-wing paramilitaries each year in next door Colombia (with military/financial backing from the "democratic" U.S. government) Yet publications like the Economist hold up Colombia as a beacon for democracy. I wonder why that is. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:41, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Lead, notability of the mayor, TE opinion
Regarding the version dispute here, I think my version is better as:
 * lead should be about the person; dedicating half of it to the government's viewpoint on their land dispute is undue weight. Please note that his own contradictory viewpoint is about as short in my version as the government's viewpoint. In the other version, government's viewpoint is several times longer and takes about half of the lead
 * I do not consider it a major issue, but I think all mayors are notable and Juan Carlos Figarella should be redlinked per WP:RED, 13k google hits seem to confirm that there is an article to be written (but most of them are in Spanish, and I cannot verify if they refer to the same person)
 * The Economist claim that he was held in hospital "against his will, virtually incommunicado" is notable and should be included; it is attributed and contradictory (also attributed) viewpoint is also present. Removing TE viewpoint would be once again giving undue weight to another side of the dispute. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:11, 13 September 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, on the Figarella, I thought this could be a WP:BLP1E issue but there are also other things, eg so that's OK. (However I think the municipality itself is too small for the mayor to be automatically notable, though WP:POLITICIAN isn't crystal on that.) On the first point, about the lead: an emphatic no. This was addressed above, and you didn't bother replying (albeit it's buried in a larger section). Your version is actively (though I'm not saying deliberately!) misleading, and is entirely unacceptable in terms of WP:NPOV. Your claim that it makes the government view take up half the lead is (a) wrong and (b) irrelevant. The lead is short, and if it takes a sentence to give a sense of the government view, a sentence it shall have! If you feel the need to "balance" that by explaining Brito's view in more detail (seems fine to me, but I wouldn't object per se), then do that. On the final point: prove that it is notable. This is an Economist blog making a five-word aside. Justify including this in addition to the information derived from a variety of sources. Unless you have a particular need to show the Economist is talking nonsense, it is better left out. If it were to be included, it would of course have to be done so in a way that made it absolutely clear the source is in no way, shape or form engaging with the contradictory evidence: it is a throwaway remark in a blog. Economist blog, yes, but throwaway remark in a blog nonetheless. Rd232 talk 19:40, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * On the lead, it wasn't addressed above to my satisfaction. You argue that 44 out of 104 words are less than a half; that's hair splitting (so it is 40%, not 50% of the lead). As I pointed out, it is much longer than Brito's own argument, hence, it is undue and should be shortened. Now, I do think that expanding the lead is a possible solution, but I am not sure if it is the best: why should we virtually copy the land dispute section into the lead? The lead should SUMMARIZE it, not copy it (and certainly, it should not copy only one's side viewpoints).
 * The Economist is a reliable, notable publication. If it makes a relevant claim, it deserves to be mentioned. And I see no reason to treat the information it has provided as any less reliable or notable than the one from the source you've added; how come your source (Spanish language El Universal) claim is ok, but The Economist one isn't? Both should be treated equally. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It may not have been addressed to your satisfaction, but you didn't reply, and your reply here ignores half of the argument: you only get 44 words (out of 104) by claiming all of the words as purely expressing government view. That is simply not the case. Your argument on the Economist has no merit: we're not going to include a laundry list of every incorrect passing remark made on a topic: we're writing an encyclopedia. And WP:UNDUE is not an excuse to be misleading in the name of balance. Brito's view is well enough expressed; if you want to revise the lead do so: but do not remove the key points. Rd232 talk 19:57, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * off-topic? - no, this is on topic, since it suggests you are quite alarmingly misinformed about Venezuelan media. Do you read Spanish? Go to the sources, and make up your own mind. Rd232 talk 20:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's just keep the lede simple, and NPOV... Hammersbach (talk) 20:53, 13 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your 3O. I think we have a consensus to expand the lead (in fact, I think that the latest version by Hammersbach is quite acceptable); and I hope Rd will agree to restore the rewritten TE sentence as you suggested. I would however note that you seem to have misread WP:RED: it supports creation of red links, not discourages it (the discouragement is only when it comes to long lists and such). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:50, 13 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for input, I agree with most of that. The main issue is the Economist quote, which breaks down into two parts. (i) there is no dispute that Brito was hospitalised against his will - that's why a court order was required! Quoting this is confusing and redundant; if the point needs emphasising, it can be done without a quote. (ii) "virtually incommunicado" is demonstrably false, and is so demonstrated in the article. There are visits from the Attorney General's office (this being a military hospital, this is a separate institution); family members; Venezuelan Red Cross; and surely Brito's lawyers too (though I don't have a source to hand for that, maybe somebody could look into it). In addition the family members communicated extensively with the media about Brito's status (public/media opinion pressure was the point of the hunger strike after all). So it is false. If it was more substantive, inclusion might be warranted, but the entire extent of it is two words in a newsblog. The notion that this article and therefore this remark was fact-checked (as suggested somewhere above) I find wildly implausible, but if we believe it was, that merely raises doubts about the fact-checking process and hence the other claims given in that blog article and not found anywhere else in national or international media. Rd232 talk 06:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Having just looked at WP:NEWSBLOG, I have to laugh: this has nothing whatsoever to do with fact-checking. " In March 2010, the Press Complaints Commission in the UK ruled that journalists' blogs hosted on the websites of newspapers or magazines are subject to the same standards expected of comment pieces in that organization's print editions." The point is that if the blog authors don't check the facts, they're subject to the same censure [by the toothless PCC self-regulation body... oh noes!] as printed comment pieces would be. The latter are not subject to fact checking (though they should be!!). Again, this point raises doubts about the use of this source. Rd232 talk 07:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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Neutrality tag
I'm adding the neutrality tag to the article since there isn't mention of the previous mediations by the government that were seen as Brito as unacceptable, whose only mention quotes The Economist, some of which were the supplies and the tractor given, which didn't have any legal documents and therefore Brito couldn't ask for replacements. The article also fails to explain that Brito opposed his transfer to the Military Hospital of Caracas, which happened only three days after he was discharged from a previous hospital after one of his hunger strikes. The discussion above seems to point out these issues, but they haven't been solved in any case, and instead gived undue weight to sources supporting government's claims. I haven't read the talk page thoroughly and I'm currently being less active in editing, but I'd be pleased to help as soon as I can. Best wishes.--Jamez42 (talk) 03:39, 9 February 2018 (UTC)