Journalists

It is very appropriate to talk about “freedom of expression” in this very moment of history of the world. Let’s see.
At least, for the last a hundred years, Venezuela has had governors who had made of the national treasure their savings bank account. Under those administrations, all money of international loans they asked for, in the name of nation, disappeared. People with no business history bought billionaire properties, in and out the country, with no explanations about where came the money from. Courts of justice were full of judges who sold each sentence of each trial. Every public building, every public sector company, every public office became in ruins. They converted us in a people without moral by exposing everyday at every time their lovers, their stolen fortunes, and their excrescences in the houses of the government, as the model to follow up.
Rosanna O., a journalist who worked at a broadcasting television network, interviewed the “personal assistant” of the president of the country (who everyone knew was her lover), asking her about that stuff: two days after, O. didn’t have any program or network were to work anymore; everyone whispered she was lucky to be alive.
After strikes in demand for appropriate wage and work conditions, two of the national journals were closed by their owners arguing bankruptcy; but it re-opened months after that, even weeks, and hire new employees at less costs, without paying anyone of their former ones.
A respected economist wrote a detailed article, showing proves of the interference in the military promotions and in the business within the Army, by the lover of the president of the country. The edition of magazine was taken off circulation by the political police that very day and then the magazine was closed … for ever.
No journal said anything about those things, of course. And voices of the few journalists that said anything weren’t listened up because were hidden by the journals. But those are just few examples about press.
The strategic public sector companies: airline, mines, electricity, and communications were given for nothing or almost nothing. The oil public company and waters were next in the list.
The salary for most people was 30 dollars a month or less. Welfare was almost extinct. Education and health were almost completely privatized. The inflation of the economy went up to 110% per year. Eighty per cent of people were extremely poor.
When more than 50% of the private bank system broke, the investors couldn’t get back their money but the bankers still are very rich people and living out of the country.
One of the Secretaries of Treasure was asked about the best way of managing money: he said the best anybody can do was took it off the country.
No journal said anything.
But this moment is different for all the journalists to maintain their jobs. Most of them are employed by rich editors and they have to criticize the government; and in order to do that, they have to think like their chiefs. Or at least, to think nothing and to write what their chiefs says that you have got to write about.
In the same way than before, journalists that never in PUNTOFIJISMO saw anything, now they are seeing everywhere, including where there is nothing to see. And there, they make it happens. And that is because journalists are there not to think or express anything; they are there to say what their bosses mandate to do, to think and to write. The freedom of expression belongs to the owner of the circus not to the clowns.
There is currently an episode of this story whose name is Oswaldo Guillén. He is a Mayor League Baseball player and manager who said about Fidel Castro that he is a respectful gay because after fifty years everybody trying murder him, he is still alive. After that he was temporarily suspended from his job and its very possible that suspension could be definitive, only because his opinion is not the opinion of the common in the State of Florida.
No journalist has defended the freedom of expression. And that is because Guillén is not the owner of any journal or journalist at all.