US reporter detained by Venezuelan authorities
Source: AP
A Miami Herald journalist was detained by Venezuelan authorities while reporting on politics and the chronic shortages in the South American country, the newspaper said Friday.
Jim Wyss, the Herald's Andean bureau chief, was detained initially in San Cristobal, a western city near the border with Colombia, by the National Guard. He was then transferred to the custody of military intelligence, the newspaper said.
Executive Editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez issued a statement calling for his immediate release.
"We are very concerned," Marques said. "There doesn't seem to be any basis for his detention and we're trying to figure out what's going on."
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/us-reporter-detained-venezuelan-authorities-225123558.html
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hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Colombia. Maybe the Venezuelans thought he was doing something besides reporting, something they didn't like. Maybe we need more facts than we have. Because if it was just for reporting, why haven't they arrested other Americans who tell us what is going on in Venezuela?
delrem
(9,688 posts)And that democratically elected government is leading what it calls a "Bolivarian revolution".
And let's also factor in the truth that Venezuela sits on a shitload of oil reserves, and other rich natural resources.
Now let's factor in the truth about the USA's military/political/economic exploits in Central and South America. For this I suggest making Kissinger's justification for the Chilean coup a ringtone, to help the memory of what is what.
Mika
(17,751 posts)The Miami Herald is famous for sending reporters w/o them entering on a professional work visa. They do this in Cuba all the time, and when the Cuban gov't finds them sending reports (working) back to the paper, while they have entered the country saying they were there on a pleasure visit, the Cuban authorities kicks them out. The Miami Herald has done this so many times, illegally, that the Cuban gov't has banned the Miami Herald reporters from entering.
The US (like most countries) has a similar policy - if a foreign national enters the US they are asked "is this a personal, or business trip", and given the appropriate entry conditions depending on if they have registered as a foreign agent or on a vacation or family visitation trip. If you are doing business on a personal trip you can be busted for operating as an unregistered foreign agent.
Something the mewling Cuba/Venezuela haters like to ignore.
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)I'm not sure how "military intelligence" has anything to do with visa implementation, and in fact, the visa is checked when you enter the country, not as you're working in the country. The Miami Herald alleges that he was initially stopped from entering but was allowed in. They probably have him on a list somewhere and when his Visa came back clean, they were forced to let him in. He's been in Venezuela for months (since before Chavez died), openly reporting the whole time. I'd be shocked if they allowed him to do this on a personal visa, but it's possible.
This is Tim Tracy all over again. He'll be released after a few days and banned from the country as Maduro goes on a chain and rants about how US imperialists are making up lies about the country.
tblue
(16,350 posts)so he's got a target on his back. I look at all corporate news about Venezuela with caution. There is always much more to the story. That said, I hope the journalist is safe.
Zorro
(15,724 posts)Ranchemp.
(1,991 posts)I think you meant Maduro, who, in my opinion, is bat shit nuts.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)but I don't think that's a conscious choice.
tblue
(16,350 posts)My bad.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)given your endorsement of the military detention of a reporter here.
delrem
(9,688 posts)I don't see what connection you're trying to make -- except maybe expressing your disgust with 'whistleblowing'...
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)But, either because it's an anti-American government, or because it's a socialist government, you're on board with their extrajudicial military detention of a reporter and are making excuses for it.
Mika
(17,751 posts)
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Mika
(17,751 posts)Since you seem to think that Ven authorities detaining CIA "journalists" is wrong.
OK. Got it.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
Judi Lynn
(160,450 posts)At some point you just should consider learning something about the subject you attempt to discuss before you start telling others how wrong, or stupid, or "commie" they are. It really IS the least you can do.
Examples of situations you easily would have learned so long ago, had you bothered:
Chile: El Mercurio & the Coup
~snip~
when Salvador Allende won (the election), Agustín Edwards, the newspaper owner, met Henry Kissinger and the director of the CIA, Richard Helms, with the aim of making it impossible for the socialist leader to take up his post. What interest did El Mercurio have, so that it involved itself in this operation? Agüero explains, "The interest has to have been the defense of their own newspaper because they thought that Allende's government was totalitarian, that it was going to expropriate the paper. In the end, Agustín Edwards was defending his own economic interests...."
Agüero concludes, "we are showing El Mercurio's criminal anticommunism. That is to say, El Mercurio has the right to be opposed to the Communist Party, but what the paper did during the last forty years is a direct action of repression which resulted in deaths among the opponents of the dictatorship".
~snip~
On the day that Helms received his instructions from Nixon, the owner of El Mercurio, wealthy Chilean businessman Agustin Edwards, conferred with top officials of the Nixon administration.61 The El Mercurio network consists of newspapers, radio station, ad agencies, and a wire service; it dominates the Chilean media in audience, size, and prestige, and includes the three principal newspapers of Santiago and seven provincial papers.62 In the seven-month period from September 9, 1971 to April 11, 1972 the CIA spent $1.5 million on El Mercurio,63 but the funding also preceded and followed this period. [...] The El Mercurio network was used by the CIA to "launder propaganda, disinformation, fake themes and scare stories which were then circulated through 70 percent of the Chilean press and 90 percent of the Chilean radio. The USIA and the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in turn circulated these stories all over the world."67
~snip~
•Even before Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile, Edwards came to Washington and discussed with the CIA the "timing for possible military action" to prevent Allende from taking office.
•President Nixon directly authorized massive funding to the newspaper. The White House approved close to $2 million dollars - a significant sum when turned into Chilean currency on the black market.
•Secret CIA cables from mid-1973 identified El Mercurio as among the "most militant parts of the opposition" pushing for military intervention to overthrow Allende.
•In the aftermath of the coup, the CIA continued to covertly finance media operations in order to influence Chilean public opinion in favor of the new military regime, despite General Pinochet's brutal repression.
More:
http://memoryinlatinamerica.blogspot.com/2008/11/chile-el-mercurio-coup.html
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Operation Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence foreign media beginning in the 1950s.
The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire. Davis' book, detailing how the media had been recruited and infiltrated by the CIA for propaganda purposes, was controversial and not always accurate.<1> More evidence of Mockingbird's existence emerged in the 2007 memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, by convicted Watergate "plumber" E. Howard Hunt and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford (2008).<2>
~snip~
HistoryIn 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the covert action branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."<3>
Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."<4> Wisner referred to this apparatus as a "Mighty Wurlitzer", referencing the theater organ capable of controlling diverse pipes, instruments, and sound effects from a central console.<5>
In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal internationalist organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s.<6> According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".<7>
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Select Committee into Intelligence Activities
In 1975, Frank Church became the chairman of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. This committee investigated alleged abuses of power by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence.
~snip~
Frank Church showed that it was CIA policy to use clandestine handling of journalists and authors to get information published initially in the foreign media in order to get it disseminated in the United States. Church quotes from one document written by the Chief of the Covert Action Staff on how this process worked (page 193). For example, he writes: “Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers.” Later in the document he writes: “Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability”. Church goes onto report that “over a thousand books were produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967”. All these books eventually found their way into the American market-place. Either in their original form (Church gives the example of the Penkovskiy Papers) or repackaged as articles for American newspapers and magazines.
In another document published in 1961 the Chief of the Agency’s propaganda unit wrote: “The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage… (the Agency) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”
Church quotes Thomas H. Karamessines as saying: “If you plant an article in some paper overseas, and it is a hard-hitting article, or a revelation, there is no way of guaranteeing that it is not going to be picked up and published by the Associated Press in this country” (page 198).
By analyzing CIA documents Frank Church was able to identify over 50 U.S. journalists who were employed directly by the Agency. He was aware that there were a lot more who enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA who were “being paid regularly for their services, to those who receive only occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” (page 195).
More:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKintelligence.htm
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Operation Mockingbird - Government Control of Mainstream Media
Operation Mockingbird
~snip~
Operation Mockingbird, as it was called, was exposed in 1975 during the Church Committee investigation, which then published its findings the following year. The full name of the committee which investigated and uncovered such activities was called, “The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities” which was chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID).
Through this investigation it became clear that such a program was developed in the 1950s for the purpose of persuading American and foreign media, as well as to use the media as gate-keepers to prevent certain information from being published and reaching the masses.
In 1948 an espionage and counter-intelligence branch within the CIA was created for the purpose of “propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” Later that year Operation Mockingbird was established to influence the domestic and foreign media. Philip Graham, the owner of The Washington Post, was first recruited to run the project within the industry and develop a network of assets.
After 1953, the network had influence over twenty-five newspapers and wire agencies and was overseen by Allen Dulles, who was director of the CIA. The Mockingbird program also involved major television broadcasters, including William Paley, the CEO of CBS broadcasting.
More:
http://www.markdice.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=113 <img src=
[font size=5]ETC. [/font]
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)anyone. I was asking a question.
Ranchemp.
(1,991 posts)You have proof that this is the case of this journalist?
No, you don't, what you don't like, along with the corrupt Maduro govt., is journalists reporting the truth about how Ven. economy is imploding due to massive corruption and mismanagement, not U.S. sabotage.
Apparently the Ven. govt couldn't find anything to link him to the CIA, which you alluded to, they released him today.
Judi Lynn
(160,450 posts)his CIA credit card, his CIA-issued underwear, along with his large gold flashy CIA ring.
Usually people doing clandestine work are so easy to spot.
Since you seem blissfully unaware of the US Gov't's history destroying economies, your time would be well spent studying what Nixon did to Chile to install his bloody puppet right-wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet, after a series of murders, and in the midst of thousands of tortured murders, destroyed families, hearts, minds, broken spirits. That was long ago, before they got as efficient as they are now at their craft.
You remember, the era when Richard Nixon told his CIA chief, Richard Helms, which he wrote down, he wanted him to "make the economy scream" in Chile, which they did.
Ranchemp.
(1,991 posts)Do you have proof that he had anything to do with the CIA?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Is there proof that he is?
Ranchemp.
(1,991 posts)Do you have ANY proof that this reporter has ANY involvement with the CIA?
Or are you one of those that believes that the proof is that there is no proof?
delrem
(9,688 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)You'd almost think he was Edward Snowden or Glenn Greenwald.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)in your view?
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)
Archae
(46,301 posts)Actually report FACTS.
Can't have those in Maduro's Chavez Theme Park Paradise, can we? 
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)Calls for Occupy-like protests around Venezuela. It won't be reported much on these forums. Especially if it takes off. But we'll see what happens.
Mika
(17,751 posts)Earlier this month, Venezuelan-American attorney and editor of the Correo del Orinoco International Eva Golinger reported that a document showed there was a "macabre" plan against Maduro's administration.
The document, Golinger reported, was titled "The Venezuelan Strategic Plan" and it was prepared by organizations that former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez supports and members of Maduro's opposition. Also allegedly involved was a U.S. firm called FTI Consulting
Documento evidencia un plan de desestabilización contra Venezuela
http://actualidad.rt.com/expertos/eva_golinger/view/110489-documento-evidencia-plan-desestabilizacion-venezuela-golinger
http://www.fticonsulting.com/
From their "who we are" page ...
FTI Consulting provides the critical external vantage point to maximize the outcomes of these shifting complex scenarios. We help you identify and execute innovative ways to transform complexities into true competitive advantages. Our professionals are some of the world’s most experienced leaders drawn from the following ranks:
Certified turnaround professionals
Forensic accountants
Corporate investigation specialists
Intellectual property specialists
Former political leaders
Former chief executives
Banking and securities professionals
Certified public accountants
Corporate, financial and crisis communications specialists
Chartered financial analysts
Construction specialists
Real estate professionals
Nobel Laureate economists
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)CHavez called her the "novia" (girlfriend) of Venezuela. This is just another piece of bs from the chavista government.
Mika
(17,751 posts)The Miami Herald has ground it's ax down to the nub w/its anti Cuba & anti Ven swill.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)to try and cover up this disaster. "Eva Golinger is a Venezuelan-American[1] attorney and editor of the Correo del Orinoco International, a web- and print-based newspaper which is financed by the Venezuelan government."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Golinger
Zorra
(27,670 posts)government 24/7 so that they can control the population, exploit workers, force Venezuela into global laissez faire capitalism, appropriate natural resources, and increase their bottom lines.
Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America
Predicting a Venezuelan apocalypse won't make it happen: in this oil-rich country the only thing imploding is poverty
For more than a decade people opposed to the government of Venezuela have argued that its economy would implode. Like communists in the 1930s rooting for the final crisis of capitalism, they saw economic collapse just around the corner. How frustrating it has been for them to witness only two recessions: one directly caused by the opposition's oil strike (December 2002-May 2003) and one brought on by the world recession (2009 and the first half of 2010). However, the government got control of the national oil company in 2003, and the whole decade's economic performance turned out quite well, with average annual growth of real income per person of 2.7% and poverty reduced by over half, and large gains for the majority in employment, access to health care, pensions and education.
Now Venezuela is facing economic problems that are warming the cockles of the haters' hearts. We see the bad news every day: consumer prices up 49% over the last year; a black market where the dollar fetches seven times the official rate; shortages of consumer goods from milk to toilet paper; the economy slowing; central bank reserves falling. Will those who cried wolf for so long finally see their dreams come true?
Not likely. In the opposition's analysis Venezuela is caught in an inflation-devaluation spiral, where rising prices domestically undermine confidence in the economy and currency, causing capital flight and driving up the black market price of the dollar. This adds to inflation, as does – in their theory – money creation by the government. And its price controls, nationalisations and other interventions have caused more structural problems. Hyperinflation, rising foreign debt and a balance-of-payments crisis will mark the end of this economic experiment.
But how can a government with more than $90bn in oil revenue end up with a balance-of-payments crisis? Well, the answer is: it can't, and won't. In 2012 Venezuela had $93.6bn in oil revenues, and total imports in the economy were $59.3bn. The current account was in surplus to the tune of $11bn, or 2.9% of GDP. Interest payments on the public foreign debt, the most important measure of public indebtedness, were just $3.7bn. This government is not going to run out of dollars. The Bank of America's analysis of Venezuela last month recognised this, and decided as a result that Venezuelan government bonds were a good buy.
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)The Aben Perl?
Judi Lynn
(160,450 posts)Do you have evidence the Venezuelan government pays Ms. Golinger to create propaganda?
Propaganda like the writing of the journalists working at the Miami Herald who were outed as taking money from the U.S. Government under George W. Bush?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)so long as it's a socialist government doing the detaining of the journalist.
Free speech is only an obligation of capitalist governments apparently.
Mika
(17,751 posts)I am well aware of your (feigning) lack of historical knowledge in these matters.
Some here might do well by brushing up on it...
THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)in the mlitaries of Cuba and Venezuela to arrest whoever they want, because they can be trusted to only target saboteurs and spies, and not to restrict the flow of information.
Mika
(17,751 posts)The CIA/Miami/el Herald do have a history of subversive ops in Ven. and Cuba. I don't have the same blind faith in their "journalists" that you do.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A Miami Herald journalist was being held for a second night by Venezuelan authorities after he was detained by security forces while reporting on the country's economic crisis.
Related Stories
Jim Wyss, the newspaper's Andean bureau chief, was detained Thursday by the National Guard in San Cristobal, a western city near the border with Colombia that is the center of a vibrant black market by Venezuelans seeking to circumvent rigid currency controls. The Herald said in a story on its website that Venezuelan journalists reported seeing him in custody but were barred from approaching him.
Novel style
(15 posts)Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports
http://m.democracynow.org/stories/12718
I wonder if AP ran an article right after any of her detentions.
Zorro
(15,724 posts)Novel style
(15 posts)And by the way, you just said something off topic.
Zorro
(15,724 posts)and your lame attempt to redirect attention to a different matter is so noted.
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)
hughee99
(16,113 posts)much in the same way that those killed in drone strikes are all "militants" or at least suspected ones.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)are here defending the MILITARY DETENTION OF A JOURNALIST.
Maduro is an authoritarian halfwit.
Novel style
(15 posts)She certaintly threw a party on behalf of her civilian detainers, because they didn't wear fatigues. I bet.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Novel style
(15 posts)Even The Miami Herald reported that ""There doesn't seem to be any basis for his detention and we're trying to figure out what's going on." You cited jail as your main concern, when even his newspaper cites his detention, period, as the main concern.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57611617/american-journalist-detained-by-venezuelan-authorities/
That argument seeks to make Poitras' detention more 'ok'.
Mika
(17,751 posts)Take note that when it comes to Cuba and Ven. this hyperbolic morphing happens all too often on DU.
cali
(114,904 posts)yeah, yeah. I know. You all think I'm just a Snowden loving, Obama hating wild eyed lefty, but I fnd this kind of hypocrisy sickening.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
Eugene
(61,819 posts)Source: The Guardian
Tom Dart and agencies
theguardian.com, Saturday 9 November 2013 23.28 GMT
An American reporter who had been held by Venezuelan authorities since Thursday was released on Saturday, according to the Miami Herald.
The Herald reported on its website that Jim Wyss was released from a detention facility in Caracas and handed over to US embassy officials. The newspaper's executive editor, Aminda Marques Gonzalez, said on the website: "Jim is safe and soon will be reunited with his loved ones."
Wyss later sent a message on Twitter thanking the Herald and others who worked to secure his speedy release.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/09/miami-herald-jim-wyss-venezuela-detained
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)What the fuck? Does Venezuela have minders now?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Greenwald's partner for 48 hours. The Venezuelan's pretty much declared it was the US behind that, so it seems like a tit for tat.
Of course this is an American journalist so he MUST be CIA. 
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuelan authorities on Saturday released a Miami Herald reporter they had detained two days earlier while he reported on the South American country's economic crisis.
The Miami Herald reported on its website that Jim Wyss was released from a detention facility in Caracas and handed over to U.S. Embassy officials.
Herald executive editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez said on the website that "Jim is safe and soon will be reunited with his loved ones."
Wyss later sent a message on Twitter thanking the Herald and others who worked to secure his speedy release.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_VENEZUELA_US_JOURNALIST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-11-09-22-56-09
Presumably he won't go back there in a rush.
Ava Gadro
(36 posts)They ought not to detain reporters. Worrisome.
Judi Lynn
(160,450 posts)countless journalists have been terrorized, tortured, murdered for decades, along with teachers, union organizers, indigenous Colombians, African Colombians, clergy, human rights workers, campesinos throughout the country, with NOT ONE WORD appearing in US corporate media, since the US has steadily backed that elitist-controlled country.
Radio journalist killed in Antioquia, Colombia
By Paola Nalvarte/TK
Posted at 2013-09-17 16:16
Colombian journalist and attorney Édison Alberto Molina was killed last week in the city of Puerto Berrío in the Department of Antioquia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Molina was attacked on Sep. 11 by unidentified suspects that shot him four times in the head when he was heading back to his house with his wife, who was mildly injured.
Molina, 40, ran the radio program “Consultorio Jurídico” every Wednesday on the channel Puerto Berrío Stereo where he would address callers' legal questions. During this time, as Colombia's Foundation for the Freedom of the Press (FLIP) has documented, he also accused the current mayor of the city, Robinson Baena, of committing several acts of corruption.
“The authorities should get to the bottom of the murder of Édison Alberto Molina, find out the motive, and put those responsible on trial,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior coordinator for the Americas.
The director of the radio station where Molina worked, Orlando González, told CPJ that Molina had received several threats in recent months and that a week before the murder, a bag came to him with a handful of dirt and unidentified bones.
~snip~
The Department of Antioquia has turned into one of the most dangerous areas for journalists in Colombia due to the increase in gang violence, carried out for the most part by drug trafficking ex-paramilitary fighters. These fighters blackmail local businesses and in many cases work with the local authorities, according to a CPJ report.
https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-14451-radio-journalist-killed-antioquia-colombia
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Colombia
Where journalist murders go unpunished
http://www.cpj.org/americas/colombia/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Colombia: Capturing Violence's Swirl
Published August 26, 2013
Stephen Franklin, for the Pulitzer Center
[font size=1]
Hollman Morris at the offices of Contravia. Image by Stephen Franklin. Colombia, 2013. [/font]
BOGOTA, Colombia–Hollman Morris persevered when death threats taunted him in a Colombia haunted by murder and injustice.
He persisted even as funeral wreaths, one after another, landed on his doorstep, and a smear campaign, staged allegedly by agents of a now defunct state intelligence agency, drove his work into the ground.
As Colombia descended into violence, a vortex whipped by left-wing guerillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels, Morris, reporting on the bloodshed, himself became a target.
When threats became unbearable, Morris, 45, would flee the country, either alone or with his family. Although he always returned, he grew more fearful.
Through his documentary video efforts at his company, Contravia (it translates as counter-currents), he exposed abuses by the shady groups as well as the Colombia’s armed forces.
But Impunity, his 90-minute documentary with Juan Jose Lozano, released in 2010, had an especially powerful impact in Colombia and globally. It argued that the government had failed to bring to justice the paramilitaries and their alleged business and government allies for the mayhem they wrought in Colombia.
When he applied for a U.S. visa to take part in a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2010, much to his surprise he was turned down. U.S. officials told him he was “ineligible under the terrorist activities section of the U.S. Patriot Act,” according to a Washington Post report.
More:
http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/colombia-violence-media-paramilitary-journalism-redemption
Ranchemp.
(1,991 posts)
Socialistlemur
(770 posts)Meanwhile in North Korea they execute anybody who reports anything.
There you go, another irrelevant comment.
Ranchemp.
(1,991 posts)I saw what you did there! 