Gregory Wilpert is an activist, sociologist and journalist. He first came to Venezuela in 2000, and worked to found Venezuelanalysis three years later. Wilpert is the author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government (2007), and was director of teleSUR in English from 2014 through 2016. Currently, he is Deputy Editor at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. In this interview, Wilpert talks about the origins of Venezuelanalysis and reflects on the relationship between commitment and objectivity in news reporting.
By Venezuela Analysis
Sep 19, 2021
How (and when) did Venezuelanalysis come to exist?
The idea for the site came about shortly after the April 2002 coup attempt against President Chávez. I had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to counter the false information circulating in the international media about Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution during and after the coup attempt. That experience made me realize that it would make sense to start a website in English that centralizes the information I was trying to spread via interviews and articles for numerous news outlets. Eventually, I got in touch with Martin Sánchez, one of the founders and programmers of the Venezuelan website Aporrea.org, and he offered to write the software for Venezuelanalysis.com. At the time, websites were still in their infancy in terms of programming, so you needed far more programming skills back then than you need now. Finally, in September 2003, we were able to launch the site.
How do you see the relationship between objectivity, on the one hand, and commitment and solidarity, on the other, in a media organ such as Venezuelanalysis?
This is a question that has implications not just for outlets such as Venezuelanalysis, but for all news outlets. That is, I would argue that the mainstream media makes us believe that there is a trade-off between objectivity and commitment, when, in actuality, these two stances are not in opposition to one another. Rather, you can be either objective, in the sense of trying to be as honest and accurate as possible, or unobjective, as in not caring about accuracy or truth. At the same time, you can still be committed to a particular point of view, deploying either objectivity or falsehoods in the name of your chosen commitment.
I would argue that all media outlets, including the supposedly “neutral” and “uncommitted” corporate media, are actually committed to particular points of view, namely in favor of dominant class interests. They just go out of their way to hide this commitment and to claim that it does not exist. An outlet such as Venezuelanalysis, though, admits its commitment to the subordinate (or “popular”) classes in Venezuela, while still maintaining objectivity, honesty, and truthfulness in its reporting.
The Venezuelan revolution has shown how important communication is in an anti-imperialist and socialist process of transformation. What do you think are the main lessons to be drawn from a process such as the Venezuelan one in communicational terms?
I would say that the main lesson is one that unfortunately the Venezuelan government and some parts of the solidarity movement have never really learned. That is, there is a tendency among state media to present its case too propagandistically, which then means it loses credibility not only among those who are neutral towards the government, but even among those who are inclined to support the government. I think the writers at Venezuelanalysis have always tried to incorporate this lesson, to remain objective, all the while maintaining their commitment to the country’s poor and to the movements that represent them.
As a negative example, how would you characterize the mainstream media’s approach to the Bolivarian Process?
The mainstream media’s approach is, of course, also an example of propaganda, but of a far more sophisticated kind than the government media. That is, because they hide their commitment to their financiers and to the dominant classes, they manage to feign a lack of commitment to anyone and by associating lack of commitment with objectivity, they claim to be more objective than anyone else. Unfortunately, most people who read the MSM tend to believe these claims of non-commitment and objectivity and thus end up believing everything these outlets say quite readily.
…
Read More: Venezuela Analysis – Objectivity and commitment: A conversation with Gregory Wilpert
…