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 Factual programmes must be fair, accurate and maintain a proper respect for truth. They may explore any subject, as long as there are good editorial reasons for doing so. If one side of a particular argument is reported, this must be done with fairness and integrity. Crisis in Venezuela - by Mariusa Reyes, producer, Spanish Americas section. As a BBC World Service journalist, I have travelled back to my home country, Venezuela, in many occasions. Reporting stories from there had always been a straightforward exercise. The rules of the reporting game were clear; the political context easily grasped. There were two main parties, which had been ruling the country since 1958 - the year Venezuelans saw the end of a ten-year military dictatorship and the beginning of democracy. Elections were quite predictable. People respected reporters for their impartiality; for handling the two sides of the coin. A divided place Not anymore though. Venezuela is a place almost cut in two - divided between those who favour President Hugo ChavezÂ’s Bolivarian Revolution and those who oppose it. Each faction wants journalists to take their own side and the local media has shown where its allegiances lie. During a two-month national strike, which began in December 2002, presenters on commercial television and radio stations - which backed the opposition to President Chavez - would read out some of the reports written by foreign correspondents. The presenters would either praise them or ridicule them, depending on which side of the conflict they perceived the reporter to be. The government used the same tactic. In his Sunday broadcasts, Mr Chavez would often refer favourably to reports by foreign correspondents he claimed supported his own views. Pressure to take sides My reporting, committed as it is to impartiality, has been challenged by some friends and former colleagues from both sides of the conflict. I have felt the pressure mounting as they subtly try to stir in me feelings of national pride and belonging, which they suspect may have been lost somewhere. On a recent trip to Caracas, I met up with a former colleague whom I had not seen for a long time. He wanted to know which side of the conflict I backed. When I explained I was there to record both sides (something we had both learned at university and later applied to our daily reporting), he looked at me as if I had just arrived from a different planet. For him, my objectivity made no sense. |
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