Last weekend Venezuela experienced another historical chapter in its Bolivarian Revolution. In a country that, for more than two decades, has had to face the hatred and lies dispersed through the reigning media hegemony, the truth finally sealed its triumph.
Since President Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, one of the communication companies that most opposed him was El Nacional, led by Miguel Henrique Otero, a ‘mass-media’ magnate who used his power to try to overthrow a legitimate government through fake news and the spread of rumors with destabilizing political ends and it even served as a platform to carry out coups, such as the one in 2002.
Despite the fact that El Nacional acted under the shadow of lies, hatred, segregation, classism and supremacism, the Venezuelan government – which always warned about what Mr. Miguel Henrique Otero was doing with this media giant of communication – respectful of the Bolivarian Constitution, allowed the right to «freedom of expression» and allowed this newspaper to subsist, despite the damage it caused to society.
But everything began to change when the director of El Nacional ordered to publish a false story against the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Psuv), Diosdado Cabello, by assuring that he was an alleged drug lord without any evidence, only repeating what other media corporations, that acted against Venezuela,were saying: the Diario ABC of Spain and the Diario de las Américas of the United States.
Diosdado Cabello initiated a legal dispute for defamation and slander against El Nacional and La Patilla, a digital medium, because his name was exposed and linked to a series of false facts, which accused him of even being the head of an associated criminal network of drug trafficking. More than six years passed for the leader of the Psuv to be compensated by the Venezuelan justice, which recognized how El Nacional acted unethically and lied by publishing the aforementioned fake news about him.
The ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ordered El Nacional a payment of 13 million dollars, as compensation to Cabello, for damage to his image and for lying against one of the principal leaders of the Chavismo. But this medium, which for more than 10 years began a ‘migration’ from its newspaper versions to a digital version, announced by Miguel Henrique Otero himself, and which implied massive layoffs of personnel who worked for years for that company, leaving a minimum staff, refused to pay the amount to Cabello, alleging bankruptcy, a situation that led to the embargo of its headquarters located east of Greater Caracas.
The University of Communication of Venezuela is born
Diosdado Cabello, promised in several of his speeches that if El Nacional paid the 13 million dollars, he would use it to build a school and buy vaccines against covid-19.
“We have said it from the beginning, we do not want that money. If Miguel Henrique and his partners were to pay that money in cash, a very small part will be destined to build a school for special children in Upata, which is a commitment that I assumed there; the rest of the money will be used to buy vaccines. If they do not want to pay, and that building is handed over to this server, it will be destined for the University of Communication», said Cabello in a broadcast of his program Con El Mazo Dando.
Finally, Miguel Henrique Otero, who alleges that it is an «illegal embargo», «a blow to freedom of expression» and that the headquarters was occupied «by firearms and without the presence of a judge», refused to pay Cabello the amount ordered by the Supreme Court and his decision opened the way to the embargo of the headquarters of the ‘historic’ newspaper, which the same socialist leader promised that, once in his hands, it would become the first University of Communication in Venezuela and would be immediately handed over to the students.
Cabello’s words came true. The Venezuelan justice acted last Saturday, May 15, and proceeded to carry out the embargo of the headquarters of this medium, which, from that moment, was in the hands of the students of the new House of Communication Studies, who saw their first class on Sunday 16 on the use of communication technologies.
On the site, according to testimonies from those who were present and disclosed on video through Twitter, the general manager of El Nacional, Jorge Makrionitis, acknowledged that the procedure was carried out in accordance with the law, without any type of irregularities and with respect by the 10 officers who carried out the procedure with normality, not as the international media says in its effort to put Miguel Henrique Otero as a victim.
Upon arrival at the site, the authorities found the site completely deteriorated, looted and without any type of workers on site. The only thing they found in Miguel Henrique Otero’s office were 200 bottles of wine, ice boxes and luxury glassware that they apparently did not have time to take away. There was also an ashtray on his desk with an eloquent message: «I love you Miami».
Thus, a place that, for at least two decades, was dedicated to spreading lies and fake news by the unscrupulous hands of its leaders, now the headquarters of El Nacional becomes a center for learning, education and above all, a site that new generations of communicators should take as an example of what not to do.
What did El Nacional do?
The Permanent Commission of the People’s Power and the Media of the National Assembly analyzed in 2015 the publication of El Nacional on January 27 of that same year in its digital version, which was disseminated under the heading «Last hour»: «DIOSDADO CABELLO’s ESCORT ACCUSES HIM IN WASHINGTON OF DRUG TRAFFICKING». According to the parliamentary report, El Nacional cited the Miami newspaper Diario las Américas as the source. This, in turn, refers to the Spanish newspaper Diario ABC as its source of information.
From this Madrid-Miami-Caracas media triangulation, says that report, the information spreads around the world until the trace of the original source is blurred and, apparently, the informative and editorial responsibility is diluted. The ABC version appears under the following headline: «THE ESCORT OF THE NUMBER TWO OF THE CHAVISMO FLEES TO THE US AND ACCUSES HIM OF BEEN A NARCO».
The headline of the information read: «Leamsy Salazar, who until now was the head of security for the President of the Venezuelan Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, who in turn is the number two in the NicolásMaduro regime has fled and is in the United States. Salazar is the highest-ranking military man who has broken with the Chavismo and has been received by the Washington authorities as a protected witness to accuse high-ranking Venezuelan authorities of various crimes, mainly drug trafficking. The testimony of the military deserter indicates that Cabello heads the cartel de los soles, a ‘monopoly’ that controls drug trafficking in the country, according to sources close to the investigation opened by the US Attorney’s Office».
The Media Subcommittee, by decision of the plenary session of the Permanent Commission of the People’s Power and the Media of the National Assembly, was commissioned to carry out an investigation on this matter. For this, a hemerographic recopilation of the aforementioned printed media was carried out the moment the information appeared and of the following days, for a week. This journalistic material was subjected to content analysis by social communication professionals.
«From the construction of a news event using techniques sufficiently studied by communication and information theorists (Eliseo Verón, Federico Álvarez, among many others), the lie takes on a life of its own and, as information, emerges from its original sources (one of the purposes of media triangulation) and spreads throughout the world. The authors of the plot resort to the simple but effective Goebbelian mechanism of repeating a lie a thousand times until it becomes the truth«, describes the aforementioned report.
The analysis adds: “In today’s world, transformed by new information technologies into a smaller and more wicked village than McLuhan’s global village, the lie is repeated not a thousand, but millions of times in a matter of seconds. However, it still has short legs, although fighting it is much more difficult and complicated. The fight for the truth continues to be an objective and a necessity of human beings and peoples of the planet».
He adds that about this reality of the speed of lies, ABC.es itself boasts: «ABC’s information spread like wildfire this Tuesday on digital portals, social networks and El Nacional, the only independent newspaper that remains, after the absolute control that the Chavista government has over the media in Venezuela.
«The Spanish newspaper not only boasts of the spread of the lie, but also continues to add falsehoods to the false news, such as the ‘almost absolute control that the Chavista government has over the media in Venezuela’, or the fallacy that «El Nacional is the only independent newspaper left», described the parliamentary report published in 2015.
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