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In reply to the discussion: Hugo Chavez: Venezuela leader suffers 'new complications' [View all]Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)The journalist has twice broken news about Hugo Chávez's illnesses his scoops were denied then confirmed by officials
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inShare.1Email Rory Carroll in Caracas The Guardian, Thursday 15 March 2012 10.00 EDT
The radio and print journalist broke the news last year that the president had cancer. Photograph: Jorge Silva/Reuters
A gossip columnist has been nicknamed Venezuela's unofficial information minister after revealing closely guarded secrets about President Hugo Chávez's cancer.
Nelson Bocaranda has shaken the country and infuriated the government by twice breaking dramatic news about the president's illness, making his tweets and columns more reliable, in the eyes of many, than official statements. Each scoop he revealed the president's cancer last summer and its recurrence last month prompted scorn and threats from officialdom only to be confirmed later by Chávez himself.
The 66-year-old radio and print journalist, reminiscent of the late British columnist Nigel Dempster, has become a must-read for politicians, voters, diplomats, investors and others with an interest in Chávez and Venezuela's presidential election.
His Runrunes ("murmurs" website, and Twitter accounts, @NelsonBocaranda and @RunRunesWeb, drip-feed information that Bocaranda says he receives from sources in Havana, where the president is being treated, and across Latin America and the US.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/15/nelson-bocaranda-venezuela-information