State media through the eyes of a BBC correspondent

Former BBC correspondent in Venezuela, Juan Paullier, was back in the country for some days last week and decided to only watch the public TV channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV).

Paullier was subjected to a 24 hours fare of conspiracy theorizing. This is part of his account:

[To watch only VTV] was to wake up in the morning listening to talks about “induced scarcity” and “non-conventional warfare,” to spend the afternoon seeing a conspiracy by the international right against the country, and going to bed with a discourse about an attempt to force a foreign intervention in Venezuela.(…)

At night the presenters of the program Zurda Konducta speak of Chavez’s “assassination” by the United States, and of a strategy by the opposition and business owners to “starve the people to death” and to force a foreign “invasion.”

You don’t have to be in Venezuela if you want to try Paullier’s experiment yourself: Watch VTV live via internet.