Oh Reuters. You nest of hacks. Do you think Venezuela isn’t onto you? Or, for that matter, every person with a brain? It’s not like you’ve never tried THIS before…
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, denounced a media campaign by the Reuters news agency against Venezuela to create an opinion matrix of a country supposedly in “default” or unable to make payments.
“Venezuela has the economic and financial capacity; the resources, the strategic politics and the supreme will to continue on its path and comply with international financial commitments,” said the president during a meeting of the Federal Council of Government taking place at the White Palace in Caracas.
“I denounce this news agency, Reuters, because they are doing harm with all their international wire stories, trying to create alarm in Venezuela,” said the president, regarding news published in recent days of a supposed case of ebola in Venezuela.
Maduro emphasized that the interest of the journalists is monetary, “being paid in dollars to do damage to their country. There is a Venezuelan journalist working there.”
Translation mine.
“Being paid in dollars” means something more in Venezuela than it does, say, in North America. Journalists being paid that kind of salary are not only being paid in non-local currency; they are also being paid to promote non-local interests, albeit covertly. If you’re working in Venezuela and drawing your pay in dollars rather than bolivars, that’s a handy way for employers to foster loyalty to foreign interests and causes. And in a country like Venezuela, where disloyal locals are all too easily riled up by irresponsible reporting by private media interests (who do you think has been actively promoting all those coups?), it doesn’t take much to start the next round of bogus accusations and calls for foreign “intervention” from the not-so-loyal opposition. If Reuters is smart, they’ll watch their backs…and not try to pass off rumormongering as “reporting”, as they’ve done all too often in the past. Otherwise, they’ll find themselves personae non gratae.
