Edited sentence: Pilger's support for Chavez's closure of an opposition broadcasting network has drawn criticism from some of his usual supporters on the left, however, who believe that as a journalist who has spent his career defending the freedom of the press in the west, he has thereby sacrificed his core principles in a reflex-action show of support for an "anti-western" world leader with decidedly anti-democratic tendencies.Television's role in the coup against Chávez</ref>