Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, who spent some of his happiest years chronicling life in Caracas, once declared journalism “the best job in the world.”
Not so if you’re reporting on Venezuela today, where journalists are feeling the heat as the South American country lurches toward full-blown dictatorship under President Nicolás Maduro.
In the four weeks since Venezuela’s disputed election, local journalists have come up with a distinctly 21st-century tactic to avoid arrest for reporting on Socialism of the 21st century:Using artificial intelligence avatars to report all the news that the Maduro regime deems unfit for printing.
In daily broadcasts, AI-powered newsreaders have been telling the world about the president’s post-election crackdown on opponents, activists and media outlets — without putting the journalists behind the stories at risk.
Carlos Eduardo Huertas, director of ConnectedThe Colombia-based journalism platform coordinating the initiative said that far from being a gimmick, the use of AI was a response to “the persecution and growing repression suffered by our colleagues in Venezuela, where uncertainty about the safety of doing their work… grows by the minute.”
Huertas said the increasingly authoritarian climate under Maduro meant that “being in front of the cameras is no longer so sensible.” The solution was to create virtual journalists to hide the identities of the real reporters who were making the news.
The initiative involves about 20 Venezuelan media and fact-checking outlets and about 100 journalists who share content, which becomes daily newscasts presented by avatars called La Chama and El Pana, which roughly translate as Bestie and Buddy.
In The debut broadcast This month, presenter Bestie explained how they hoped to spread the word “about what is really happening in Venezuela”.
“But before we continue, in case you haven’t noticed, we want to let you know that we are not real,” the avatar added, before announcing the latest, all-too-real statistics on Maduro’s crusade to stamp out dissent. “In less than two weeks, more than 1,000 people have been arrested and at least 23 have died during protests,” Bestie said. The number of detainees now stands at more than 1,400.
The name of the artificial intelligence journalism project, Operation Retweet, is partly an ironic reference to the name the Maduro regime has given to its harsh crackdown on opponents: Operation Tun Tun (Operation Knock Knock).
Among those detained are at least nine journalists, according to the Venezuelan journalists’ union SNTP. One of them, sports reporter and photographer Paúl León, 26, was detained by police while filming peaceful protests and later charged with terrorism, a crime that carries a sentence of up to 30 years in prison.
On Sunday, prominent entertainment journalist Carmela Longo was taken from her home in Caracas by police after being fired from her official newspaper, Últimas Noticias.
The need for virtual reality news anchors is easy to understand given the political situation that has descended on Venezuela since Maduro was first elected in 2013, and which has worsened in recent days.
“Sources don’t speak out. Journalists are forced to work anonymously, sometimes in hiding, concealing their identities for fear of government reprisals. Social media accounts have been silenced… vital parts of the news ecosystem, like X, have been blocked“, reported the Venezuela-focused website Caracas Chronicles last week.
This month, the former director of state broadcaster VTV, Vladimir Villegas, reclaimed Around 100 of its employees were fired after messages deemed hostile to the government were found in their WhatsApp chats.
He second episode Operation Retweet tackled a particularly dangerous topic given the severity of the government crackdown: it questioned official attempts to blame the opposition – which Maduro accuses of trying to launch a fascist coup – for many of the post-election deaths.
Contrary to government claims, Operation Retweet’s collective investigations suggested that state security forces were largely responsible for the number of bodies.
“All the victims were killed with firearms and, according to witnesses, the alleged perpetrators were police, military or paramilitary groups that here in Venezuela are known as collectives“,” the male avatar, Buddy, told viewers.
The video’s co-host said most of the victims were under 30, while a 15-year-old boy had also been killed. “They came from working-class communities and had ordinary jobs such as barbers, caretakers, students, construction workers, street vendors, motorcycle taxi drivers and sports coaches,” the avatar added. “In just a few days… at least 15 children were orphaned.”
Huertas, the Colombian journalist, compared his Venezuelan colleagues to firefighters risking their lives for democracy.
“If there is a fire, you want to see firefighters on the scene. Well, there is a fire now (in Venezuela) and there are many firefighters present,” he said, praising the talent and commitment of the Venezuelan press.
Despite the dangers, “(they) are there on the front lines, doing the work that society needs them to do,” Huertas said.