Collaboration helps keep independent journalism alive in Venezuela

It has long been difficult to be a journalist in Venezuela. Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index ranks it 156 out of 180 countries, and more than 400 Venezuelan news outlets have shut down over the last 20 years.

The country’s recent presidential election made the job of doing journalism even more difficult. On July 28, incumbent Nicolás Maduro declared himself the winner of a third term. There’s “strong evidence to suggest that the Venezuelan president lost — by a landslide — to the main opposition candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González,” The Guardian noted, and the election was “riddled with problems,” cataloged by The New York Times here. Last month, Venezuela’s Supreme Court declared Maduro the winner, and this week, he issued an arrest warrant for González. Venezuela has broken out in mass protests and at least nine journalists have been wrongfully detained, according to Reporters Without Borders’ most recent count.

Still, in recent weeks, Venezuelan journalists have found innovative ways to keep independent journalism alive. Here are some of their efforts.

#VenezuelaVota

Leading up to July 28, 12 news outlets — El Pitazo, Efecto Cocuyo, Runrun.es, Cazadores de Fake News, and TalCual — partnered to share stories and resources and produce live election coverage. The initiative was named #VenezuelaVota and election stories from the network were published under the #VenezuelaVota byline on the participating outlets’ websites, to raise awareness about the project and to protect journalists from repercussions.

#VenezuelaVota offered live, around-the-clock programming on YouTube around the election, led by El Pitazo. The project included more than 70 independent journalists within the country and 18 correspondents scattered internationally, according to El Pitazo.

Thirteen out of 24 Venezuelan states don’t have any independent news outlets that aren’t influenced by the government, according to Espacio Público, a nonprofit that studies freedom of expression violations in the country.

“In Venezuela, there are what we call information deserts,” Jonathan Gutierrez, the director of solutions journalism publication Historias Que Laten, told me — cities and regions “where there are no media outlets because they are either censored, shut down, or so closely monitored that what they produce is just content, rather than journalistic information. Part of the [goal] was also to reach these information deserts.”

#VenezuelaVota has continued to publish under that shared byline over the last month, and publishes at least 20 election-related stories per day.

A second initiative, #LaHoraDeVenezuela (”Venezuela’s time”), is organized by Connectas, a nonprofit that trains Latin American investigative journalists. #LaHoraDeVenezuela is a hub on Connectas’s website that republishes stories from independent news outlets within the country and from international news outlets.

A sampling of recent stories: An exclusive interview with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado; information on how Cazadores de Fake News used AI tool Google Pinpoint to make more than 25,000 election records searchable; and a report on the increase in surveillance of journalists and activists traveling through the Caracas airport.

The news outlets within #VenezuelaVota are doing their best to protect their journalists, their sources, and the integrity of the information they’re reporting. Editors meet virtually to discuss stories and share resources. They’ve organized their reporters to focus on major issues like breaking news, protests and speech suppression, and arbitrary arrests. They’ve also mapped out the locations of all their reporters, both to keep tabs on their safety and to deploy them to cover the areas they know best from the safety of their homes.

Because some protestors have been slapped with terrorism charges, #VenezuelaVota changes sources’ names and blurs people’s faces in published photos and videos. Journalists are also backing up their reporting notes to the cloud but erasing their phones’ messaging histories, in case their phones are seized.

Noticias sin filtro

Venezuela restricts or blocks access to many independent news outlets. In June, NGO Conexión Libre y Segura launched Noticias Sin Filtro (Unfiltered News), a VPN-based app that aggregates news from 18 news outlets that are blocked in the country. Noticias Sin Filtro has been downloaded from the Google Play Store more than 50,000 times.

VPN use is common in Venezuela and Conexión Libre y Segura has been teaching people how to use them for years, along with monitoring digital rights violations in the country. But as English-language news outlet Caracas Chronicles notes, using a VPN to access a single article can be an arduous, multistep process. The app serves as a one-stop news shop. It’s free, and doesn’t collect any personal data. The homepage is a feed of stories about politics, election updates, and international Venezuela-related stories. There’s a tab for just election-related news, a tab that lists all the participating news outlets, a tab for different story categories and themes, and a multimedia tab for in-app podcast listening.

I asked Luis Ernesto Blanco, director of independent news site Runrun.es, whether he’s noticed any impact from Runrun.es’s inclusion in the app. “We have had significant growth in our metrics in recent days, but we attribute this to the increased interest in Venezuela,” he told me in an email. “But qualitatively, it has been important — not only because we’re among allies in a trusted media circle, but also because of comments we’ve received from some readers who have told us that they [found us] through the application.”

“La Chama y El Pana”

To further the stories that independent journalists are covering, Connectas also launched “Operación Retuit” (Operation Retweet), a video series where the news reported by independent outlets is delivered by two AI-generated hosts. Named La Chama and El Pana (Venezuelan colloquialisms for “the girl” and “the guy”), the hosts take turns providing news updates regarding election issues. The videos first launched in Spanish, but are also being published in English.

El Pana and La Chama look real-ish and have Venezuelan accents when they speak Spanish and English. Every video and its captions disclose that the hosts aren’t real people, but the information they’re sharing is. Of the 15 published so far, the video with the most number of views (38,700) on Instagram delves into a recent pattern of Venezuelan activists, academics, journalists, and others who have had their passports revoked.