In a mild shock -- mild because it's mentioned before the elections, but probably won't be when it really matters after the polls close -- Frank Bajak and Jorge Rueda at the Associated Press, in a story about how the last opposition TV station in Venezuela is being sold to an insurance magnate who is reportedly "friendly with government," noted the extraordinary handicaps that Venezuela's opposition presidential candidate faces as he attempts to unseat the Chavista successor to the late dictator Hugo Chavez in April's upcoming elections.

Specifically, the pair wrote:

CNN has just performed a valuable public service by revealing that the director of the Americas Program at the (Jimmy) Carter Center, Jennifer McCoy, is a complete moonbat. And how did they do that? Simple. They merely quoted her.

Although McCoy is often cited in the MSM as some sort of expert on the subject of Venezuela such as in her recent USA column about the Chavez "legacy," her efforts to defend the Chavista thugs extends even to the point of completely misconstruing the opposition to vice president Nicolas Maduro's unconstitutional takeover of the presidency of that country. Here is how McCoy incorrectly describes that opposition:

While even the left-wing outlet ThinkProgress finds it necessary to discourage fellow Democrats from eulogizing Hugo Chavez, propaganda for the late dictator keeps popping up in strange places in the New York Times.

Thursday brought a couple of oddly placed propaganda pieces for the late left-wing strongman of Venezuela. In Thursday's Metro story "In the Bronx, Memories Of Chavez And His Aid – Cash and Oil Flowed After a Visit in 2005," reporter Frances Robles took a trip down leftist memory lane, when Chavez showered the South Bronx with (Venezuelan) government money.

It's as if Associated Press reporter Paul Haven saw colleague Frank Bajak's pathetic obituary of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez earlier today (covered by Matthew Balan at NewsBusters) and said: "Oh yeah? I can outdo you."

That he did, in an execrable report excerpted after the jump which should be saved to the hard drive and shown as evidence that anyone who calls the wire service "the Authoritarian Press" is not at all out of line (bolds are mine):

[Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Good Morning America as airing the Brandi Hitt story. Her piece was posted on GMA's website, but did not air on the program.]  ABCNews.com on Wednesday greeted the death of Hugo Chavez by avoiding the word “socialist.” Instead, journalist Brandi Hitt touted the repressive leader as someone who “appeared to never back down from a challenge.” The reporter never mentioned Chavez’s crackdown on free speech or democracy. Instead, she featured a woman in the streets of Venezuela gushing, “He’s a man that cared about us…He did not give anything to me, but he gave it to my people.”

Over on Today, NBC’s Mark Potter offered this friendly description of the individual who made friends with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “Many here were still surprised when he died, in part because of his larger-than-life personality.”  Potter announced that crowds in Caracas were chanting “Chavez lives” and “the struggle continues.” Both Today and Good Morning America made sure to play footage of Chavez’s 2006 appearance at the United Nations. There, the authoritarian leaded mocked George W. Bush as “the devil.”