A Conversation with President Hugo

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H: No, because I've begun to think that it's not worth the trouble. During my first two years in government, I made it a priority to visit the editorial boards of several US newspapers, usually in the morning after a long night of travel having arrived at 3 in the morning. I would stay awake until 6 in the morning to speak with these editorial boards. I approached these opportunities optimistically, hoping to be able to have a good conversation and exchange, perhaps over coffee and with mutual respect. I was very patient with them, detailing our policies, leaving them my phone number, fax number, email. I told them if they had any questions or uncertainties, to call me so we could clear them up. That they should send a reporter to me whenever they wanted. I felt like this exercise was very important.

It seems to be part of a larger social defect in the US -- that's a society that should really develop some kind of response to the intellectual battering by part of the media that seems to take place daily. I sincerely hope that some day the US public will develop some kind of mass critical consciousness, that they will remove the veil from their eyes and see the media powers for what they are. No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity. They must be critical, and make it their personal responsibility to humanity and morality to discover the truth.

Eduardo Galeano once said, speaking about the global media companies, "Never before have so few fooled so many."

M: But what about the Venezuelan media? This is an even bigger problem because they are actually a part of the opposition, it is very hard to have a fair election or have a referendum in such a situation, isn't it? In the U.S., if you had ABC, NBC, CBS, all the cable channels and the newspapers lined up on one side, we would not consider that a fair election. But you also have the problem that if you try to do anything about that, they will accuse you of censorship.

H: We've just been trying to figure out our strategy in this area. It's not the first time we've encountered this kind of media hostility. In the 1998 electoral campaigns, the ratio of media support between the candidates of the oligarchy and this humble servant was 10 to 1, in their favor.

The same thing happened with the Constitution -- the entire news media was against the project, running full-page ads and headlines against it. Nonetheless, it was passed by 80% of the population! The ratio of media support for the opposition was 100 to 0 on the day of the coup. 100 to 0! It was a total white out of our side -- worse than even during the election campaign.

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