Weisbrot disagreed with Larry Rohter, the former South American bureau chief of "The New York Times", over his statements on Venezuela, where Rohter claimed that in support of the film "South of the Border," Weisbrot, Tariq Ali, and Oliver Stone manipulated data to present a positive image of Hugo Chávez. Rohter described Weisbrot as "... an economist, not a historian, and apparently not a very good one", suggesting that he was "Either ... incompetent deliberately manipulating the numbers." Weisbrot contested the claims of inaccuracies, suggesting that they are indicative of sloppy and misleading coverage of Venezuela in the popular press, and saying that "the way most Americans get the idea that Venezuela is a dictatorship, for example, is from these editorials".