Namely, a HACK. See why, before greedhead Viacom pulls THIS, too:
Oh gawd, what an embarrassment to journalism that woman is. Shallow, shoddy, partisan, and at times, just plain nasty. She talks to him in a fawning tone, but of him in a disparaging one. Notice that? I did, and it made me cringe. It smacks of unreliability–she’s not out to tell the truth or anything approaching it. She’s only there to use her interviewee–chew him up and then spit him out in whatever form she’s decided he must take. She’s not a servant of truth, as a good journalist should be. The only thing Barbara Walters serves is Barbara Walters–and maybe the editorial line of ABC, which, as I’ve already noted, is hostile to Chavez.
The effort she makes to hide her bias is flimsy; she goes to the barrio and interviews one or two happy Chavistas, but so what? She interviews THREE escualidos first, and makes it sound like those prep-schoolish disociados are somehow representative of something, like a majority of Venezuelan public opinion. (They aren’t.) She gives clear priority to the anti-Chavez side, even though they’re greatly outnumbered, as even a cursory glance at the last election returns will tell you. (And for those who want something more in-depth, here you go. The Internets are your friends!)
She also makes it sound like the gated fortresses these poor little rich babies live in arose in response to Chavez, when in fact they were there, were a symptom of malaise, and a source of deep resentment, before he was even a blip on the political radar. Enormous class divisions existed long before Chavez ran for office, but you’d never know it from her report, which blatantly flip-flops the true order of things. Her token effort to strike a balance is thus undermined even before she makes it. One wonders why she bothers at all.
Since she thinks he deserves to be demonized for his “name-calling”, let’s call a spade a goddamned shovel already.
Baba Wawa, you’re a two-faced, crapaganda-mongering bitch.
