Enjoying the moment (part 2): Forero writes his first real anti Chavez article

Readers of this blog know well the gripe I have had with Juan Forero when he was the NYT correspondent. Apparently something happen during his transition to the Washington Post but suddenly Forero started finding flaws in chavismo. Well, the circle is now complete as his piece in the Washington Post today can be qualified as an anti Chavez article. Mind you! Do not expect chants to speed up the removal of Chavez, this is the Post after all, but this is as much fair and balanced criticism as we can expect from those quarters.

And you know what, the article is good, clear and well researched. That is, Forero is now getting it. You see it at the slight turn of certain phrases such as: "Other private stations that were harshly anti-Chávez but have toned down critical coverage avoided the same fate, as communications Minister William Lara readily acknowledged in an interview broadcast Friday on CNN's Spanish-language service." Now, this might seem almost a normal sentence but think about it and observe how Forero exposes the phony in Lara, and thus the whole phoniness in the Chavez campaign to clean his image after closing RCTV. Not an "O'Gradyesque" article yet, but well on its way.

Because, see, when RCTV was closed, Chavez lost the support of all serious journalists, even those who supported him earlier. Chavez threatens their sustain, their job, and journalists do not like that. Venezuelan journalists have long known that, but now it is the turn of foreign journalists to know that if it were for Chavez they would all be fired at the first criticism.

No matter how much Chavez spends in propaganda he is now assured to have a lot of anti Chavez articles written all the time for free. He will only have for him hack jobs like the scandalous op-ed by Bart James in the LA times which reads straight as a piece of propaganda. Compare Forero and James, and for all my previous dislike of Forero one can tell easily what is the difference between a paid agent and a professional journalist with his own ideas and criterion. Even in his worse days Forero would have not written even an OpEd piece like the one from James. At least I like to think so.



-The end-