[Witness spoke in Spanish, interpreted as follows:]
Hello. Good afternoon.
I am a Venezuelan journalist, and two years ago two partners and I founded a new journalistic enterprise called Bus TV.
We founded it in the midst of the 2017 protests. We did so, because the reality that we witnessed on the streets around the country was very different from what we saw on the buses or in low-income neighbourhoods.
What we saw was that there was an information gap. There has been a systematic policy since at least the year 2007 by the government, then led by President Chávez and now led by President Maduro, that attempted very clearly to achieve communications hegemony, using the state media apparatus and also the purchase of independent media—media that now have shifted their editorial line to be closer to the state.
In Venezuela in the year 2017, there were at least four months of protest. More than 150 people were murdered during the protests. At the time on the streets, there were different perspectives, and a large segment of the population was under-informed. They were disconnected from the protests and unaware of what was happening. We thought it was timely to bring this information closer to the people. This then became a project to do journalism and to try to overcome censorship and disinformation in Venezuela.
We have a video to show you that gives you an idea of how Bus TV works. I'd like to roll the video if we can.
[Video presentation]
Thank you very much for allowing us to roll this video.
This is a rather unique activity that is not easy to explain, if you don't see it with your own eyes. We climb on to city buses and we use a cardboard frame that looks like a TV set. We read the news to the passengers.
In having done this for two years, the response has been fantastic. We feel that we've been creating a community around this appreciation for freedom of information and freedom of expression. We do this on a number of routes, especially in low-income neighbourhoods.
The drivers, the passengers and the journalists have come together to defend freedom of expression. People wait for us. They welcome us. They recommend news that we should read. We start informed debates within the buses. Overall, we've had great reception.
This last month has been very tense, especially last week with the arrival of the humanitarian aid. We have felt that people are more polarized. On some bus lines, our reporters have had to sometimes put a stop to their practice of reading the news because the environment has become too tense at times. It's similar to what is happening outside the buses. These are times of uncertainty and frayed nerves for everybody.
People, overall, are grateful for being informed. There is so much disinformation, not only political disinformation on political or economic affairs or the big issues, but also on things that could save people's lives.
You've seen in the video that we also provide nutrition information, health care information. Here in Venezuela we have seen a resurgence of diseases that had been eradicated before, such as diphtheria. We see hepatitis A. We see malnutrition.
We have a total lack of health information campaigns, so we are doing our best to bring this information to people. It can change people's lives, improve people's lives and provide a service, and this is always well received.
Right now we have two teams in Caracas, in Valencia and in Mérida, and we are about to start one in Guayana City. We have more than 40 journalists. This is our way of trying to overcome disinformation in Venezuela.
Between the years 2005 and 2017, according to investigations by the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, 39 media outlets have closed, mostly radio stations. Major newspapers have been sold. The only 24-hour news channel was sold, and it changed its editorial line in 2013. It stopped being an independent critical outlet. There are a number of states that have no newspaper right now.
We believe we cannot wait for the public to come to the media. The media has to go out to its audience to bring them information, especially independent and balanced information.
I also wanted to talk about what it has meant for us to go out on the streets this year.
We have a security protocol for our reporters, and we have had to fine-tune it during January and February. These past two months, we have come to realize that the opinion matrix, so to speak, people against the entry of the humanitarian aid, especially on that issue, has really taken hold of certain sectors of the population.
This particular topic has caused a lot of anguish and tension within the buses. Some of our journalists have been attacked and assaulted. We've had to get out of the buses. We can see that this is creating a lot of tension. This week things are a little calmer. But on the street, we feel that over the past month the uncertainty has made us all easy prey for misinformation.
We continue to do what we do, and we continue to grow. But we also know that it will become increasingly difficult to get on the buses and provide information. We feel that it's increasingly necessary and, at the same time, increasingly difficult. It's more sensitive than it was a couple of years ago because people are more tense.