Behind the News
Quitting Time
In Venezuela, one newspaper exemplifies a bad trend
By Rachel Jones Thu 31 May 2007 01:59 PMThe call came on a crisp spring morning, when I was still a journalism student in New York.
“So, I hear you’re working for us,” said a man who identified himself as an “assistant” to the owner of The Daily Journal, Venezuela’s only English-language newspaper. I’d emailed the owner, Julio Augusto López Enríquez, a few days earlier to ask about the possibility of employment if I chose to move to Caracas. “Uh…” was all I got in before he continued. “There are some U.S. military ships off the coast of Venezuela. We want you to go to the Pentagon, and find out what they’re doing there.”
I began to explain that the Pentagon was not only not in New York, but that it also rarely provides information on its operations to unidentified journalists who happen to knock on the door. But I was interrupted once again. “If they won’t talk to you,” the man advised, “take a picture of yourself in front of the Pentagon. We’ll print it, and say that they won’t talk to you.”
I hung up slightly dazed, and very confused. Such an idea flew in the face of everything I’d learned during my yearlong program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Nevertheless, I called the Defense Department, and relayed what I’d found out to López’s assistant. And upon graduation in May 2006, I decided to make the move to Caracas. After all, The Daily Journal had a hardy, sixty-year-old reputation as a breeding ground for successful foreign reporters, and had been specifically recommended to me by an editor at The Associated Press. If a few journalistic standards were bent along the way, well, maybe that came with the cross-cultural territory.
But upon arrival, I quickly discovered that things were more out of line than I’d anticipated. López—who had purchased The Daily Journal in March 2006 for upwards of $1 million, and has since invested large amounts of money in a start-up television station—has a close relationship with President Hugo Chávez’s administration. In Venezuela, where opposition-aligned media are facing increasingly aggressive government measures, state-owned news organizations are becoming more prevalent and many private outlets have adopted less controversial editorial lines. Under López’s direction, The Daily Journal has joined a growing list of media whose overseers prefer that content be shaped less by what is newsworthy than by what will guarantee the government’s monetary endorsement and avoid its reprisals.
The Daily Journal is one of a small handful of daily English-language newspapers that have established themselves in Latin America. In 1990, it had a healthy circulation of 20,000 and news agencies viewed it as a training ground for potential recruits; many prominent journalists started there, and fondly recall developing their skills in a “sink or swim” environment. Today’s Daily Journal resides in low, concrete structure in Caracas’ eastern industrial neighborhood of Boleita Norte. Over the past year, what was once an aging building with stained carpets and a few ancient computers has morphed into a beehive of activity, with López, former owner of a Caracas daily, El Diario de Caracas, as its queen bee. Flat screen televisions hang on every freshly painted wall; the parking lot is filled with shiny new vehicles bearing the logo of López’s new, twenty-four-hour news channel, Canal de Noticias. The newspaper has changed as well. Government-sponsored advertisements, often in Chavista red, are regularly splashed across its pages—many of which are now printed in full color, something it couldn’t previously afford.
Yet despite the financial investment, the quality of the newspaper’s content—particularly on its national pages—is deteriorating. López’s attempts to open bureaus in Peru and Colombia failed; debts left behind in Colombia went unpaid for months. In Caracas, where circulation has dropped below 1,000, a number of news agencies have canceled their subscriptions, or are considering doing so.
When I arrived at the newspaper in November, I was surprised to discover that I had been named “national editor.” Although I had some journalism experience, my Spanish language skills were lacking, and I knew very little about Venezuela. However, I soon came to realize that the position was hardly enviable. The “stories” I was in charge of editing were largely regurgitations of reporting that the Spanish-language papers had done. But what was more disturbing was that I was expected to adhere to a poorly-defined idea of what was considered “appropriate.”
While I was never explicitly told that I couldn’t write a story, or that I had to adopt a certain angle, my higher ups often used vaguely-worded instructions to encourage slanted coverage. “Look at this,” the editor, Miguel Angel Villaba, advised me shortly after my arrival, flipping through the paper. He’d recently been promoted to the position after his predecessor was fired. “So be careful,” he said pointedly, indicating an advertisement picturing a group of smiling, red-clad participants in one of the president’s many social programs, followed closely by one for Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state-owned oil company. “I’m an opposition guy,” he said. “But I don’t want to get in trouble, and I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
