Investor's Business Daily, March 19th, 2007
Media: Is Barbara Walters so desperate for TV ratings that she'd flatter oily dictators? Or is she polishing Hugo Chavez's image to get her licks in against George Bush? Maybe she can tell us.
There's something unseemly about a prime time newswoman of Walters' stature flirting and chatting amiably with an authentic tyrant like Chavez.
Oh, she asked pointed questions alright -- about whether he was married and the 26 cups of coffee he drinks each day. But she neglected to mention that he's a self-declared communist who rules Venezuela by decree.
No, the picture Walters presented in her "20/20" interview Friday was of a misunderstood "socialist" who needed more time to explain himself. And his acrid attacks on the U.S. were just the result of too much caffeine.
Would Walters have been so accommodating to Adolf Hitler? We'd like to know.
The problem with Walters' 'View'-ish chat with Chavez was that it served Chavez's ends but offered no benefit to U.S. viewers. The common aim seemed to bash George Bush. But another effect was to strengthen Chavez.
Chavez is South America's most ruthless dictator, filling jails and repressing freedom. He told Walters he intended to remain in power permanently and added he'd like to run the U.S., too.
But Walters brushed off the signs of megalomania and continued to try to make him seem human. She asked how he felt about marriage and kids, and flattered him with descriptors like "intelligent," "dignified" and "statesmanlike," as if any tyrant couldn't project charm to a gullible newswoman. No dictator rises without it.
As Walters and Chavez java'd and jived, she neglected to ask about the coffee shortages now rife in Venezuela due to Chavez's economic grip. She didn't bother to ask about the growing exodus of Venezuelans fleeing to the U.S. And she gave only cursory mention of their plight, deceptively dismissing them -- just as Chavez does -- as "the wealthy."
Nor did Walters ask about Venezuela's growing role in the global drug trade, or Chavez's $4 billion military buildup that directly threatens the U.S.
Walters was more interested in Chavez's image problems, all of which he created himself. She asked about the "biggest misperception" about him and allowed him to complain about the widespread use of his own photos with other dictators, like the toppled Saddam Hussein.
She also reviewed his many public insults to Bush, repeating them lusciously ( "devil," "donkey," "drunk," "liar," "coward," "murderer") -- and thereby doing some indirect Bush-bashing of her own. Her attention to this gave Chavez a platform to frame his confrontation with the West in his own terms.
Chavez justified his insults by saying they were mere words, while Bush, on the other hand, was the real killer over in Iraq.
Obviously, Chavez found a useful idiot in Walters. All cleaned up in business attire, he used carefully considered words and got no hardball questions.
The interview was quite different from a 2005 encounter with Ted Koppel in which Chavez was asked serious questions about his claims the U.S. was planning an invasion of Venezuela, and in which he was eventually shown to be full of hot air.
Walters showed no such probity. Instead, her interview was touted by government-run media as must-see viewing and played on every TV and radio station Chavez controls.
Ratings are one thing, but when one realizes that press freedom is rapidly disappearing in Venezuela, it's a terrible irony. Private media, like Venezuela's own RCTV, is vanishing as Chavez tightens his grip.
All this, however, seems irrelevant to Walters, whose desire to get ratings enables her to fall into the clutches of any dictator.
Copyright 2007 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
