Another piece of biased crap from Bloomberg Venezuela hit the wires today, penned by Steve Bodzin and Matthew Walter (what? Him again? Sheer coincidence, y'know.........). Entitled "Chávez Ambitions in Venezuela, Abroad May Sink With Oil Price" its premise is that Venezuela is in the schtuck if oil prices remain low.I don't really have a major problem with the concept of the note; after all, I said much the same thing with this post on Peru yesterday and even mentioned Venezuela will be in the same kind of position as Peru if long-term prices for commodities stay where they are (for the record, I say U$70/bbl is a baseline level for Venezuela in 2009 and U$90/bbl is comfortable). No, the problem I have with the crud from Bloomberg is the way the business world just gets spoonfed what it wants to hear from people who should be reporting the news, not trying to invent their own version of it.
1) Let's note the language used by Walter and Bodzin:
"tumbling oil prices", "slash output" "tailspin", "socialist revolution", "plummeting oil revenue", "arms purchases from Russia", "oil subsidies for Cuba".
And all that, ladies and gentlemen, is in the first two paragraphs of the report! Errrr....trying to suggest something here, bloomiedudes? I can hear the chat at Bloomie Vzla editorial meetings right now; "Hey, I have a great idea! Let's treat our readership like stupid, braindead sheep...that'll be good for ratings!"
2) So what about the people quoted in the report? Well Walter and Bodzin have managed to collate eight different people to quote from which is all very industrious and that, but strangely seven of those are anti-Chávez, his gov't and his plans. The other person quoted? Hugo Chávez. This is just the kind of populist crap the world wants to read, of course. But don't you think that Bloomie could have dug out just one voice to pit against the seven they quickly cobbled together for this ridiculously biased attack note? Just one? For the sake of appearance of trying to be slightly fair and balanced? Nah, not Bloomberg Venezuela. We have to put up with moronic reporting written by morons for morons and edited by morons.
So go and read the note if you want. As it happens I'm doing Walter and Bodzin a favour here, as they actually get paid year-end bonuses depending on the popularity of their reports (hey, working for Bloomie is like working for Gawker! I'd never thought of it that way before...). But please don't confuse what you read with serious reporting. If these so-called reporters want a job as analysts then they should go out and get one, then they'd have all the right in the world to opine on their chosen subject. But they're reporters, not analysts. They're paid to write balanced reports, not one-sided crap like this. Serious businesspeople read Reuters for LatAm.