El País' Maduro Op-ed and Their 'Balanced' Coverage Fool Nobody
The Maduro op-ed on Spanish paper El País almost made him sound democratic and kind. We wonder how much he paid for that page and if El País’ ethics were sold separately.
Photo: IELA
Yesterday, a lot of Venezuelans had to suppress their gag reflex when they found an op-ed by no other that our commander in chief Nicolás Maduro, inside the glossy and reputable pages of Spain’s El País newspaper.
In a rambling and incoherent piece apparently written by an intellectual 10-year-old, Maduro (or perhaps designated genius Jorge Rodríguez) trolls us with claims that blatantly contradict all available evidence about current Venezuelan affairs:
“For example, 20 years ago it was normal to be born in Venezuela in the middle of obstetrical violence. And it was far from us to imagine that at the time of birth not only the health of the newborn was at stake, but also the health and the rights of a mother and her family… ”
Despite what this Maduro op-ed says, everyone knows Venezuela’s health system is in tatters today, most women can’t eat properly or lack access to drugs to prevent pain during childbirth. Many are forced to give birth on the street or lying in hospital waiting chairs. I guess chavismo’s definition of “obstetrical violence” is the advances of modern medicine.
Maduro also talks about wages:
“20 years ago, before our bolivarian revolution, it was normal to blame youth unemployment on young people themselves, and the idea that the poor were poor because they were lazy and that for being lazy they deserved very poor health, hunger wages and homelessness.”
Maduro, who destroyed the bolivar’s value and whose policies resulted in the world’s only existing hyperinflation, reducing the minimum wage’s real value to three dollars, dares to talk about hunger wages.
Look, I know Maduro is a morally rotten individual who will take any opportunity to advance his cause, but shame on El País for giving a voice to a brutal dictator in the name of a hypocritically “balanced” coverage of news. Does the guy who control and who censors all media in Venezuela and has enough money to buy page-long ads in the New York Times need help from Spain’s premier newspaper to tell blatant lies without getting fact-checked or edited for comprehension? Was Bashar al-Assad busy? Did Kim Jong-un said “no”?
I guess whitewashing dictators is a Spanish thing.
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