captioning sponsoredy wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, may 4: the standoff over transition of power in venezuela conties. north korea tests short range projectiles. and, in our signature segmt: songwriter, musician and social activist ani difranco. next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. seton melvin. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided

by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're yourre rent company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by rcontributions to ys station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thank you for joining us. in venezuela today, the majority of military and security forces continued to back president nicolas maduro. meanwhile, u.s.-backed opposition leader juan guaido called again for the military to join him. president maduro visited a military base to rally support r his regime against opposition leader juan guaido. >> ( translated ): we say to the traitors, to the coup-making oligarchy, to imperialism, the slogan that marks this historical time. let it be heard even in washington: "loyal forever." >> ( translated ): never

traitors! >> sreenivasan: in the call and response, soldiers chanted," never traitors." in a tweet today, guaido called on supporters to gather again peacefully, and there were some demonstrations today.al today, russian state news agencies said that foreign vrov will meety with venezuela's foreign minister tomorrow. will have more on this developing story coming up, after the news summary.ko soutan officials report that north korea launched several unidentified short-range projectiles into the sea today. the move is likely a sign thats pyongyang ho pressure the united states to reduce or abandon international sanctions. this latest provocation comes as diplomatic talks between north korea and the united states remain stalled, folla failed summit in hanoi, vietnam, inebruary. despite the launch, president trump tweeteabout north korean leader kim jong-un this morning, saying, "he also knows that i am with him and does not want to break his promise toe. deal will happen!"

a month-long ceasefire betweenin palen militants in gaza and the israeli army came to a violent end today. palestinian fighters in the gaza strip fired hundreds of rockets into southern israel, wounding several israeli civilians. israel's defense forces quickly retaliated with air strikes and tank fire against militant targets that continued into the evening. gaza's health ministry says that at least one person was killed and there were injuries as buildings in gaza city were targeted and destroyed. today's fighting came as leaders from hamas and the faction, islamic jihad, were in egypt for talks aimed at maintaining the cease fire that had begun toun vel in recent days. cyclone fani continued to move across india and bangladesh a today, leavinguge path of destruction, but causing relatively few deaths. although the extent of the cyclone's damage and the total number injured and killed has yet to be determined, the evacuation of more than one million people is likely to have spared the region a devastating death toll. the storm made landfall wither 155-mileour winds

equivalent to a category-four hurricane. indian offials say the low number of casualties is due to disaster rdiness planning after a 1999 super cyclone opkilled more than 10,000 le. back here in the u.s., heavy rain is forecast over dae next severa for many midwestern river towns already hard hit by flooding. the mississippi river crested above its 1993 record in davenport, ia, before the waters gradually began to recede. but crests along the river further south aren't expecte until the middle of next week. four deaths have been blamed on the floods. >> sreenivasan: for more on the situation in venezuela, the role of russia and the u.s., and how other countries in the region are responding, we're joined now by christopher sabatini, an adjunct professor at columbia university and editor of the online publication, "global americans." so regime change is not easy. calling on your supporters to go

out and tto convince the military that standing in your way to drop their wpons and join you, that's what juan guaido was trying all week. didn't work. >> it didn't work. and t large part at is because this military in its officer class is deeply tied to maduro. it's deeply tied to corrupt networks, to narcotics trafficking. you know, if this regime fawms, many of them face prianson possible extradition. so they're tied not out of ay personal loyalty or any sort of ideological loyalty to maduro. ey're tied to him because they're part of this larger narco state that has emerged in venezuela. and getting them to flip wil not be easy. and you have cuban and russian advisers bking them. and it was a risky gamble and did not pay off. >> sreenivasan: was there a miscalculation on the part of the u.s. government about juan guaido's support. >> one is maybe it was all staged by cban inelligence

interests and the russians to basically flush out who were disloyal, disloyal elements within the maduro government. so it's all a setup. some people are saying that and that's really part an parcel to what cuba has done within its own country for decades now. it's alsothis idea that basically guaido may have overplayed his hand,hat this desire to see regime change as one former administrationof cial put it, hope is not a strategy. that's really all they had, andh sense that well, these negotiations are ongoing. this time it will work.th it's beee times now that guaido has called people to the street, called for the military to defect or flip ainst maduro and it hasn't worked. and he's dealing with explezo lessitical capital each time he does this. >> sreenivasan: just this week we had a call between vladimir putin of russia and donald trump. isth sides confirm t one part, that they talked about venezuela. in the read-out frm moscow, vladimir putin said you know what? it's venezuela and only venezuela that can determine its future. >> this is where trump is,

in many ways getting crosswaves th his own cabinet. bolton, john bolton, the national security adviser, and mike pompeo have both mentioned the presence of cubans and russians. pompeo himself said in an interview just yesterday and earlier this wheek, but for russians, maduro was ready to hop on a flight and go seek exile in cuba. and trump comes out and says, "no, putinand i want what's best, in the best interest for venezuela." it isn't really clear. trump has pretty much given bolten cart blanche to manage eae policy against venezuela, but it isn'tlly clear that he really has sort of the force to be able to make a rgime flip in the way he desires. >> sreenivasan: what about the countries in the region? this? they see all of >> there's a group of latin american governments that include uruguay and peru and chili and mexo, called the group of lima. they have come out endorsing guidelineo andd criticie

maduro government. but they have been relatively silent. it's been the united states who has mostly employed sanctions, really tough sanctions. canada and the e.u. have doe some. but within the region they have been a little more reticent to deploy sanctions and have been critical of any tawsk a s. military intervention. they say that we can't tolerate. >> sreenivasan: chris sabatini, thanks very much. >> thanks very much. >> sreenivasan: musician ani jufranco started playing in public when she wa nine years old, eventually forming her own record label, righteous babe records. four decades later, she has written a memoir about the road she has traveled sce, and about how both she-- and the world-- have changed. newshour weekend's christoph booker has our story. >> reporter: after all the notes from editors and the revisions, ani difranco is happwith what she has written, and ready to sit down to record the final draft of her story. well, maybe. >> yeah, it just seems so subjective.

i mean, even me telling my own story, i feel like... it's just one lady's opinion. ( laughs ) you know? >> reporter: throughout her career, there have been many opinions about ani difranco-- usually articulated with an impressive array of hyphens: one-woman-show, feminist- entrepreneur, folk-punk-indie- rock-singer. and throughout, she has beenha morewilling to weigh in with opinions of her own, on everything from women's rightsua to sabuse to patriarchy. ♪ i am not a pretty girl's thot what i do ♪ >> reporter: but today, perched in a new orleans church converted into a recording studio, she's a narrator, "arting on page one of her long-awaited memoi walls and the recurring dream." >> i remember being on stageon night, in a tight little dress... >> reporter: even though she has recorded 20 studio albums, sold 5.5 million records and won a grammy, hememoir is not a highlight reel.

rather, it's a retellingnd interpretation of how it all got started, detailing how a child from buffalo grew up, started r own record label, and launched an independent music career that not only garned legions of fans, but for manys, listener served as an introduction to a new generation of feminism-- one in which she would take a leading role. ♪ how come i can pick my rs but not my nose? ♪ ♪ who made up that rule anyway? >> reporter: i contacted a number of my friends who i knew were fans of your music. and one friend in particular said, "of the many things i appreciate about ani and her music, is that she showed me, as a 16-year-old, that life is messy, tt i can be myself and my-- my full self." >> those are the stories i get on the street now. so many of my fans, you know, have grown up, like i've grown up, and they come-- they come to me now and they're like, "checkt out 've done. and you kicked it off for me."an you knoweven the dudes-- i love the dudes, who are like,

"man, somebody gave me first tape and i-- it's like ili suddenly-- read what it's like to be a chick." ♪ ♪ >> reporter: since her 1990 self-titled det, ani difranco's music, released on her label, righteous babe records,as long made the personal political. a self-described bridge between the traditions of folk music and contemporary times, she sang about everything from body image, menstruation, bisexlity to how she navigated a world where men often hold a disproportionate amount of power. ♪ i was eleven years old >> reporter: with "1-800-on-her- own" printed on e back of the tapes and cds she sold out of her car, fans could call righteous babe records directly. as she writes, the number was "part mail-order, part youth crisis hotline and part activist networking switchboard." >> there's a lot of people out there who feel that their story,

and rightly so, feel that their stories are not being told, on tv, or, you know, history books, or, you know, who feel that there voices are just not included. ♪ he says, call me, miss difranco ♪ if there's anything i can do i sayt' ♪s mr. difranco to you >> reporter: by the ddle of the decade, after she toured constantly, word of difranco hap ad, and this would change things for her. >> unencumbered by producers and publicists, difranco gets to bee folk-punky-bisexual self on record and communicate with her fans, of whom there are a growing d devoted number, directly. is this any way to run a career? >> reporter: turns out, it was a good way to run a career. after mtv flashed the number on the screen at the end bof that segment, righteoe received so many phone calls, they had to unplugguhe phone and out how to pay for the bill, which was thousands of dollars. >> it's a re pleasure to welcome ani difranco! >> reporter: there would be more appearanceon television, music videos, and magazine covers. in the late '90s, "ms." magazine

projected her as one of the 21 feminists for the 21st century, and her live album, "living in clip," went gold. ♪ ♪ but as her fame increased, so did the weight of being a cultural beacon. as she writes, the "high demands" from her fan base grew ever more challenging. her once-celebrated status as a voice for female empowernt was scrutinized with each new career decision. ♪ just the thought of our bed ♪ makes me crumble like the plaster where you d ♪ the wall beside my head >> in the old days, i talk about how intense and, you k voracious and almost cannibalistic... ( laughs ), you kn-- my listeners could be. it's like, "no, don't go over there, stay here. i need you here. and this person's like, "no, come over here. i like it better over here." and you feel so pulled to affirm each unaffirmed person. you pretty quickly realize you can't. you can't.

♪ and people talk about my image ♪ like i come in two dimensions like lipstick is a sign of ♪ my declining mind >> reporter: as the millennium came to a close, righteous babe records s a robust company, difranco's prolific writing, recording and constant touringel providing the but as she recounts, by 2001, d,she found herself exhausnd realized she had to slow down and start thinking differently and this is where she concludes her memoir, at the end of what she now lls her "making of" period. the years since, what she calls "the remake," have been less intense, but certainly not stagnant-- a relocation to new orleans, motherhood, tours and more music. and while the tempo of her life may have changed, the spirit that she brought to those early club days never left. how do you think a young ani would respond to "me too"? >> if-- if this had been happening when i was young, i guess i would have just felt

less like a voice in the allderness, you know? i rely have felt that way a lot, a long time. and even essences of, of resentment towards other young samen, going, "thank you for saying what i can'" and me thinking, "why can't you say it? why has it got to be mwa i don' to say it for you. i want us all to say it."ut >> reporter:n writing her memoir, difranco says, she sees a welcome disconnect between some of the things sg about so many years ago, and where she see things aow. >> writiut that experience of second-class citizenry that i had through my formative years and, you know, now, as i enter an age of maturity, i look around and i think, "i don't thin daughter ex-- is experiencing that, in the way that i did." you know, i've got a kid in the sixth grade, and i look around at her friend set, and they know what's up. they know that it doesn't matter what col you are or what sex

you are. and they're not as hindered as was in my generation. so, and that's thrilng. >> reporter: but this feeling doesn't extend to evything. some of her songs hold just as much punch as they did when they were first written-- particularly, a song she wrote shortly after the columbine massacre: "to the teeth." ♪ the sun is settingry on the centu ♪ and we are armed to the teeth we're all working together now meto make our lives rcifully brief ♪ >> reporter: what's it like for you to play "to the teeth" 20 years later, when it still has such relevance?co yod play it now and you could be singing about parkland. >> it can be very discouraging n recognize that, yeah, w

you have these sort off,ime capsules thought gun violence was completely out of hand 20 yearago, and so did you, remember? yeah, to be afraido bring your kids to school, it is just not okay. ♪ and every year now like christmas ♪ some boy gets the milk-fed suburban blues♪ ♪eaches for the available arsenal ♪ and saunters off to make the news ♪ >> i didn't get to write that song and then solve the world's problems. you know, you just have to believe that you sy on the path of being real and putting love into the world. ♪ because the world owes me nothing ♪ and we owe each other the world ♪ >> i think in my work, i've sort of tried to talk about my

experiences and my struggles, buthen, show a sense of possibility. ♪ and i do it just because i love t >> sreenivasan: this week, facebook banned several high profile accounts that it says engage in violence and hate, including white supremacists, nati of islam leader louis farrakhan, and a number of right-wing commentators, including alex jones. inhe wake of live-streamed attacks and published threats, there are new calls for soal media companies to do more to block extremism and hate. at facebook, thousands of real people known as moderators are the frontlines of this battle, looking and listening to some horrific material. i recently spoke with casey newton, silicon vall editor for "the verge," who reported on

the toll this content is taking on facebook moderators. >> if you accept that much of our political discussions now take place o social networks, then the folks who are moderating this content are essentially first responders. they're on the frontes, and we've entrusted them with these really fundantal questions of safety and security. and while we've given the voluminous guidelines from which to apply the policy, the truth is that some of these are always going to be judgment calls. i had moderators tell me about cases where they would be told to take a post down, and they would do that, and then laterld they we told, "oh, no, no, leave it back up," and then hours later take it back down again. it's that kind of inte of a decision-making process. it's very fast. luid.very f and folks just change their minds. so it's incredibly difficult work tha a of course, so very low paid. >> sreenivasan: these are just a few thousand people in one location or another. but they're not actually going agesand seeing all the p that exist on facebook. that would be impossible.

so there's, what, an algorithm that is kind of sorting it through and putting it up on a silver platter to them? >> that's right. so if you see somngetou don't like on facebook, you can click a button to report it. and all of that goes intga bi queue, and then that gets served up to these moderators, often in no particular order. so they sut sitdown at their desk and click a button that says, "resume reviewing" inside a custom piece of software that e will behas, and som very simple bullying. some will be very benign. and then some of them will be incredibly disturbing. >> sreenivasan: you talked oo a lo different people for this story, some with the blessing of the employer, and quite a few who spoke to you on kind of the condition of anonymity. >> that's right. and the reason for that is that facebook requires alof these folks on sign a nondisclosure agreement. that has somefe bens. but they also have a negative side, which is that a lot of the folks that i ske with said they didn't even feel

comfortable talking about their work with their partners, their spouses, their family members, their close friends, because they were worriet they would be held legally liable for violating this n.d.a. and when you consider the kin of content that they're looking at and howpressing and upsetting some of that content is, that can pue some of thm into a very dark place. so i talked to a number of folks who told me tht they had developed symptom that closely resembled post-traumatic stress disorder. and thenn another sort of strange twist, a lot of the moderators i spoke with said that the more they reviewed content about sort of fringe conspiracy theories, the more they themselves came to bieve it. >> sreenivasan: this is-- there's a paragraph from your story i want to quote. the motteratorred told me atere's a place where whey see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. a former employee told me he has

gun to question certain aspects of the holocaust. another told me he's has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun atid hie and says, "i nolonger believe 9/11 say terrorist attack." and this is a result of a jobth 're doing every day. >> the passage you read contained some of the stuff thrt sed me the most from my reporting. it is some of the stff i don't think has been explored before, and that's the long-term effect that this work can havfoe on s. and, you know, keep in mind that many of the people that i've spoke with only do this job for about a year. that's about as long as they can handle it. not all of them make it that long. other folks g fired during training, for example. and so you might do this job for, you know, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, making $15 an hour. you get fired or you leave because it's t, oo upsettid you're going to then have uma,ing psychological tra which, of course, facebook is not going to pay for you to go get treatment for that.

>> sreenivasan: to watch our full interview on the lives of social media moderators, visit www.pbs.org/newsur. they develop severe anxiety whe still in training and continue to strilg with trauma symptoms long after they lead, and where the counseling thats cognizant offem ends the moment they quit or are simply let go i mean, especially when you're talking about long-term consequences, the idea that youl no longer have access to the counselor or a group of counselors that mght help you with the very thing you've suffered through the job the day after you leave that b. it's not like the problem stops. >> you know, when you think about other slks who have thi kind of job, other people who are in first responder roles-- police offier, a frefighter, a social worker-- in man cases we

think those jobs are so important, we collectively pay for them as taxpayers and we give them pensions because we acknowledge the sacrifices they have made so that we can have a safe and free society. and i think that the time has come for us to shift our perspective on what these platforms are and on the value of the work these froaks doing.k again, if you e content moderation off of any social network, whether it'sfacebook, youtube, twitter, reddit, those places quicklyecome totally unusable. they're overrun by trs. you and i would never want to spend any time there. and so because of the work that these folks are doing and turbing of the really dis stuff that they are subjected to and work through, they create a safer world for rest of us. >> sreenivasan: all right. casey newton, silicon valley editor of "the vge," thanks so much for joining us.pl

>> msure. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, spacex launched a dragon capsule lled with supplies for the international space station this morning from cape cal. and the launch commentator couldn't resist a reference onhe this mayourth to what has become known as "star wars" day, thplay on the movie's famous phrase, "maforce be with you." when the capsule reached its ouorbit, he said, "may theh be with you." that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. ve a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.g >> pbs newshour weekend is made possib by:

ar bernard and irene sc. sue and edgar wachenheim iii.to melvin. the cheryl and philip milstein family. r dr. vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. pbs.ore.

(peaceful music) - i was born on august 4, 1929. i was born on a farm in slovakia. my grandfather moved tthat, 1812 or something like that. they were ving there while it was the austria-hungarian war. the village that was the nearest to the farm was called snina.