I have just seen a strong and bitter post from Juan Cristobal at Caracas Chronicles where he blames Ana Maria Fernandez for a lousy media communication system at the Capriles campaign. I will not discuss to which extent that person which I personally do not know has an effect on an eventual victory or loss for Capriles and our cause. However I am going to side with him that her handling of the media part of Capriles campaign has been dismal as far as I personally can vouch.
I write this note because Juan mentions me. As a general policy I have always limited my mentions of my contacts with the political word to the strict minimum. These are less than what Juan has himself but they are nevertheless real since I even got an interview from Leopoldo Lopez, for example.
A few weeks ago, given the extent to which the English blogosphere had succeeded in the world stage after Chavez death (plenty of interviews from newspapers to TV for many of us), I thought that we could be of use for the new campaign, that we could collaborate to explain, expose, collaborate, etc... since clearly the blogosphere enjoys of great credibility. I did talk, got meetings. And nothing came of it, though I was told my proposals had been "passed along". Note: I tried the approach after discussing it with Juan while he was working on his side.
My proposal was simple: for free we could deal with foreign media requesting from information to interviews. We could thus save the media section of the Comando Simon Bolivar some time, help them in selecting those that had the intelligent questions over those that were a fly by operation, for interviews or what not. We have been at this for a decade now, none in the press can fool us anymore, I can assure you in all modesty. In fact, I may be myself the most naive of our lot. Note: we offered to help, not to take charge, we are not that stupid.
And yet, nothing came out of it. Maybe we are pretentious, maybe they actually do not need us at all, maybe they have a great strategy. But after reading Juan's post, well, I have my doubts about their competence, about their understanding how the media works, about the minimum of respect that one should show to any media, even those that you criticize. I have the scary feel that they think that Capriles tweeter numbers are enough to explain him to the world......
Oh well.....
I write this note because Juan mentions me. As a general policy I have always limited my mentions of my contacts with the political word to the strict minimum. These are less than what Juan has himself but they are nevertheless real since I even got an interview from Leopoldo Lopez, for example.
A few weeks ago, given the extent to which the English blogosphere had succeeded in the world stage after Chavez death (plenty of interviews from newspapers to TV for many of us), I thought that we could be of use for the new campaign, that we could collaborate to explain, expose, collaborate, etc... since clearly the blogosphere enjoys of great credibility. I did talk, got meetings. And nothing came of it, though I was told my proposals had been "passed along". Note: I tried the approach after discussing it with Juan while he was working on his side.
My proposal was simple: for free we could deal with foreign media requesting from information to interviews. We could thus save the media section of the Comando Simon Bolivar some time, help them in selecting those that had the intelligent questions over those that were a fly by operation, for interviews or what not. We have been at this for a decade now, none in the press can fool us anymore, I can assure you in all modesty. In fact, I may be myself the most naive of our lot. Note: we offered to help, not to take charge, we are not that stupid.
And yet, nothing came out of it. Maybe we are pretentious, maybe they actually do not need us at all, maybe they have a great strategy. But after reading Juan's post, well, I have my doubts about their competence, about their understanding how the media works, about the minimum of respect that one should show to any media, even those that you criticize. I have the scary feel that they think that Capriles tweeter numbers are enough to explain him to the world......
Oh well.....