When journalism is exiled | The Hill

It all started with a very strange baby formula.

The substance was being distributed to low-income households across Venezuela as part of a domestic aid program by President Nicolás Maduro’s government. The program, known as CLAP, was announced in 2016 and was touted as an effort to provide essential goods to Venezuelans hit hard by the economic crisis, some at risk of starvation.

But journalist Roberto Dennis and his colleagues at the independent investigative news website armand.info I immediately realized something was wrong. They saw a video on social media showing that when mixed with CLAP powdered milk, it had a lumpy, weird texture that definitely didn’t look like milk. They have heard reports of adults experiencing bloated stomachs after drinking it. The number of small children who become seriously ill with diarrhea.

“Mothers all over the country were the first to denounce the poor quality of CLAP’s food, especially the formula,” Deniz says of how the story first came to his attention.

Deniz and his colleagues investigated and found that some of the powdered milk provided through the CLAP program was so deficient in calcium and so high in sodium that researchers they consulted He said it cannot be classified as milk at all. And to make matters worse, the program itself enriched Maduro’s close ally Alex Saab, who made huge profits while importing low-quality products to Venezuelans.

The “food fraud” scandal was just one part of a larger international money laundering operation that put Saab on multiple countries’ most wanted lists. Because his charges involved U.S. bank accounts, Saab was indicted by the U.S. government in 2019 on money laundering charges related to alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

“This is a person who is abusing the international financial system,” Marshall Billingsley, a former U.S. Treasury official who helped build the case against Saab, told FRONTLINE. “What he was doing for Maduro was unconscionable.”

But where did Deniz end up after exposing the scandal?In exile, as a FRONTLINE documentary It will be relevant at the premiere. Later this month.

As Deniz and his colleagues pursued this wide-ranging corruption scandal involving the Maduro regime and faced threats and intimidation, Deniz made the difficult decision to flee the country to continue reporting on the case.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Deniz in Venezuela today. His parents’ home was searched, he was sued for criminal defamation by Saab, who has pleaded not guilty to the US charges, and he was extradited to Venezuela in a controversial prisoner swap last December. Deniz hasn’t set foot in his home country for more than five years.

Deniz’s story is part of the worrying trends I want to highlight this World Press Freedom Day. It means that journalists, and by extension, journalism, are being forced into exile.

Earlier this year, the United Nations warned It said an increasing number of journalists and media workers were “forced to flee the country to escape political persecution, legal and other restrictions in their home countries.” Reporters Without Borders is “Big wave” This is a request for assistance from a journalist who was forced to relocate to another country due to threats.and Freedom House, where exiled journalists increasingly targeted They were run away by the government.

The dangers posed by these trends affect not only journalists but people around the world. Even in war zones like Gaza, if journalists don’t do their jobs (Nearly 100 journalists have been killed in recent months) or in countries leaning toward authoritarianism, there is no record of facts on the ground. Its journalistic record is irreplaceable. Its absence harms us all, allowing disinformation, corruption, and other abuses of power to go unchecked, benefiting only the people, governments, and institutions with something to hide.

Governments are well aware of this fact, and some are finding new ways to make independent reporting more difficult in an attempt to avoid the accountability that independent reporting imposes.

we recorded this Complex and evolving threat environment In recent years, he has faced journalists in several documentaries. “thousand cuts” followed Maria Ressa’s fight against disinformation and intimidation in the Philippines. “global spyware scandal‘ investigated how a powerful spyware called Pegasus was used against journalists investigating government corruption in several countries, including Azerbaijan’s Hadiya Ismailova and Mexico’s Carmen Aristegui. “President Putin vs. the media“ We profile Dmitry Muratov, an independent Russian journalist who was forced to start a new publication based in Europe rather than Moscow due to Kremlin repression. An upcoming documentary about Deniz and his colleagues is the next chapter in this body of work.

“Professionally, I always say it was worth it,” Deniz says in the film about the price he paid for his journalism.

But at the individual level, things are more complicated.

“It’s the same thing I always say: It would have been easier to look away,” Deniz says.

On this World Press Freedom Day, and in the days to come, I hope we all choose to remain focused on the difficult stories that journalists around the world are covering and uncovering. From the fact that journalists are increasingly being expelled for their work. And from the inspiring reality that despite all odds, this important work continues.

“From the beginning, we understood that our strongest defense in this case was to continue the investigation,” Deniz told me last week. “for us, armand.infoDespite the inherent risks, our core responsibility remains to expose corruption within the Maduro regime and hold those responsible to account. ”

Laney Aronson-Russ is front lineProduced at GBH in Boston. Documentary chronicling the story of Roberto Dennis,”dangerous mission,” Debuts later this month.