You started as an intern: How did your on-air career begin at CNN?
I was writing my thesis for my master's in international relations and economics. I didn't even want to be a journalist. I wanted to be a diplomat … to travel the world and try and solve problems.
I applied for (and got) an internship with CNN public relations in London and, at the end of the internship, they asked me if I could stay on for two months because there was a European football championship taking place in Portugal and they needed a Portuguese speaker.
So I told them I would do it. Then one day as I was leaving the office, I got a call from HR and I was told that I had a job interview. I said, “Well, you must be mistaken because I haven't applied for a job.”
It’s really such a cliché, being in the right place at the right time. I still do not know who put my name forward for that job. I would love to know.
Later on, I was asked to travel to Lisbon to coordinate CNN’s coverage of President Obama’s visit to Portugal in 2010 during the economic crisis. The head of the business news team in London called me and said, “We want to talk about the economic crisis in Portugal for the Richard Quest show,” so I said, “Great, I'll get you a guest.” And she said, “No, Richard wants you to do it.” I knew it was very much a sink-or-swim moment. That was my first time on air, talking about the state of the economy and the mood in the country, live from Lisbon. And that's really how my career got started at CNN.
Tell us about going undercover in Venezuela during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We went to Venezuela to get a sense of what was happening there. I had done some initial reporting from London, trying to get a sense from authorities what that number was in terms of cases, and it just did not look real. So I made some calls to some doctors in Venezuela and they said, “No, this is not the real number.”
I hadn't seen what the state of Venezuela’s hospitals and economy was like previously, so we thought, “Let's go there.” It was risky doing this undercover, but we already had strong contacts on the ground.
I can get away with being inside a hospital in Venezuela because of I'm fluent in Spanish and I didn't stand out too much. Also, having a face mask helped. My producer, Vasco (Cotovio), is Portuguese and blond and blue-eyed, so just to be safe, we told him to stay in the car. He joined us inside the hospital later.
Once we were inside, I was left speechless by the stories that I heard. The conditions were so dire in these hospitals that Venezuelans were deciding to stay at home, figuring they had a better chance of survival at home. As I walked through hospitals, there was no medication, the drawers were completely empty.
I got many messages from Venezuelans who were incredibly grateful that we were showing the world Venezuela for what it was. We were worried, to be honest. Can they arrest us? This is a huge concern. But we took the risk.
The people we talked to were incredibly scared by the brutality of the regime. We spoke to more than two dozen health care professionals and aid workers, and all asked us not to reveal their identity for fear of reprisal from the Venezuelan government.
You have to respect that because at the end of the day, you get on a plane and you leave and your life goes on and these people stay behind. You've given them your word, so you need to keep that. That is so important.
What do you think Americans should be paying more attention to?
Everything we report on in Latin America seems to be through the lens of migrants arriving in the United States, but we don’t always focus on the deeper layers. Let's take a few steps back and understand why they are arriving here, what conditions are like for them to come to the US.
There are so many other threads, including the rise of the left in Latin America, the influence of Iran, the influence of Russia, of China, in America's backyard.
I'm hoping to go to Brazil in October for the elections there. Poverty is through the roof, political divisions are strong right now, and that's why we're seeing the comeback of Lula (Brazil’s leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) because Brazilians long for that time — that golden age, so to speak — when they were making a lot of money.
For me South America is one of the regions and stories we ought to be paying closer attention to, because what happens there has implications not just in the US but beyond.
