Where's the muckraking spirit?
Reading over Katy’s latest post, I’m struck with a mixture of exasperation and despair over the state of Venezuelan journalism. Because, you see, I’m in no doubt that the horror stories about corruption she tells are true – and that other cases out there must make the ones she tells seem vanilla. Given all that, I just can’t work out why nobody in Venezuela takes the time to investigate, document, and publish the evidence on this stuff.
I mean, poor Iris Varela: she goes to all the trouble of finding a Merc SUV without tinted windows specifically so that people will see her in it and nobody has the decency to take a photo of it. And what would it take to dig up some documentary evidence on JR’s Margarita hangout? One or two marginally competent reporters with enough institutional backing to spend a couple of weeks on the story, that’s all.
Too scared to print it under your name, or in your newspaper? Hell, what’s Noticiero Digital for? (Or, for that matter, Caracas Chronicles?) Somehow, though, these stories never seem to get commissioned. It’s infuriating.
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