Groucho Marx School of Journalism

British premier Winston Churchill had a very peculiar way of treating the press: “There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion”. Brazilian mainstream media seems to have taken Churchill's words  very seriously. So much that the journalist and blogger Paulo Henrique Amorim coined a term to define its general attitude: PiG, an acronym for Partido da Imprensa Golpista — Party of the Coup-Plotting Mass Media.

The “coup-plotting” would be the boycott promoted by the Brazilian mainstream media against subjects that are not of their interest. Amorim explains in his site the reason for term: "In no serious democratic country in the world, conservative, low-quality and even sensationalistic newspapers and one single television network have as much power as they do in Brazil. They have become a political party — the PiG, Pro-coup Press Party". To Paulo Henrique Amorim, Brazilian press historically defends coup d'états attitudes whenever the Brazilian President is not elected from among the members of Brazilian elites — like President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Amorim identifies as the head of the “published opinion” the three families that control the three major members of the mainstream Brazilian media: Marinho (Roberto Marinho, Globo Organization), Mesquita (Julio de Mesquita, O Estado de S.Paulo) and Frias (Octávio Frias, Folha de S.Paulo). It's a fact that, together, these three families have the power to control and define what is and what isn't news in Brazil. Civita family, controller of Abril publisher, probably deserves an honorable mention too.

The members of PiG may have similar interests and methods but PiG should not be taken as an organized informal institution. An example of  how PiG can bite its own hand is the letter that Ali Kamel, journalism director of Globo Network, wrote to Folha de S.Paulo on 06/06. Kamel referred to an article published by the newspaper the day before that accused Globo Network of being complacent to Sérgio Cabral, governor of Rio de Janeiro:

Fernando de Barros e Silva, na coluna "Verde água" (Opinião, ontem), diz que "Sérgio Cabral surfa tranquilo, com o apoio de Lula e a simpatia da Rede Globo".Como o colunista não acompanha o jornalismo local da TV Globo no Rio, acredito que a afirmação seja fruto de falta de conhecimento ou de preconceito. A TV Globo do Rio cobre o governo Cabral da mesma forma que a Folha cobriu o governo Serra e outros. Assim como a Folha, a TV Globo é apartidária e busca a isenção em todas as suas coberturas.
ALI KAMEL, diretor da Central Globo de Jornalismo (Rio de Janeiro, RJ)

Fernando de Barros e Silva, in the article “Green Water” (Opinião, yesterday), claims that “Sérgio Cabral wanders calmly, with Lula’s support and Globo Network’s sympathy”. As the columnist does not follow Globo Network’s regional journalism in Rio [de Janeiro], I believe the affirmation is motivated by  lack of knowledge or prejudice. Globo Rio Network covers Cabral’s government in the same way as Folha has covered Serra’s and other’s administration. As Folha, Globo Network is nonpartisan and seeks exemption in all its journalistic coverage.
ALI KAMEL, director of Central Globo of Journalism (Rio de Janeiro, RJ)

At least they have a sense of humor. Maybe PiG learned their lessons on journalism from Groucho Marx:

I don't know what they have to say

It makes no difference anyway;

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

The Times They Are A-Changin

On Sunday 04/18, TV Globo, by far the largest TV Network in Brazil, broadcasted a video celebrating its 45th anniversary. In the piece, various artists that work for the network declaim a message whose main motto is “We can do more”.








As soon as it was aired, the video raised protests from Dilma Rousseff voters, who claimed that message was a sympathetic nod in the direction of the presidential candidate José Serra. The slogan of Serra’s presidential campaign is “Brazil can do more” and his party, PSBD, is represented by the number 45 in the voting process.

The noise was so loud that on the next day Globo decided to suspend the broadcasting of the video. The network claimed that the message had been elaborated on last November, before Serra’s slogan was released, but the video would not be aired anymore to avoid giving grounds for accusation of Globo being tendentious.  

It’s hard to believe that it was all just one big coincidence — especially considering Rede Globo’s historical alignment with the conservative political parties. One of the most shameful episodes of Brazilian journalism happened in 1989, when Rede Globo manipulated the editing of a debate between the two presidential candidates, Fernando Collor de Melo and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. During “Jornal Nacional”, the network’s main news program that back then held an audience rate of more than 90%, the edited version of the debate showed all the best moments from Collor and only the worst ones from Lula. The biased media coverage was a decisive element in electing Fernando Collor as president.

We are not in 1989 anymore and the “We can do more video” certainly gave Rede Globo a taste of the time change. The complaints about the video started only a few hours after its first broadcast. Marcelo Branco, coordinator of Dilma Rousseff’s online campaign, reposted on the morning of 04/19 on his twitter account a commentary about the similarities between both slogans. It was all that it took to the commentaries spread all over the web. Later on the same day, Globo announced the video’s suspension.

Marcelo Branco's "tweet": Serra's slogan "inspires" Rede Globo's Jingle: http://tinyurl.com/y4qvxwy

The episode proves how the social media is gaining space and importance in Brazil and how it’s changing the relation between voters and media. Nowadays, Globo probably wouldn’t be able to repeat the 1989 debate’s episode and get away with it.

By the way, in 2009 Rede Globo saw no need of producing a piece for its 44th anniversary. Maybe 45 is their lucky number.

Related links:

Interview (in Portuguese) with Sérgio Caruzo, coordinator of José Serra digital campaign, and Marcelo Branco, coordinator of Dilma Rouseff digital campaign, on the importance of social media in the elections: http://infoapps.com.br/podcast/trends/eleicoes-na-web.mp3
(In Portuguese. By the end of the interview, both Caruzo and Branco talk about Globo’s video)

Suggested readings:

On the social media campaign trail in Brazil (article, in English): http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/social-media-campaign-trail-brazil

Imprensa e Poder
(Press and Power)
Author: Emiliano José
Publisher: Hucitec
In my opinion, the deepest analysis of the media’s decisive influence on electing Fernando Collor de Melo as president.

Notícias do Planalto
(News from Planalto)
Author: Mário Sérgio Conti
Publisher: Companhia das Letras
A complete report on the mass media’s relation with Fernando Collor written by an insider — Conti was one of the editors of Veja magazine when Collor was elected.

Suggested soundtrack: Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin

Cannot be proved or denied = can be published

On April 5th 2009, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo had a perfect “Liberty Valance moment” when it published a front page story about Dilma Rousseff's activities during the military dictatorship in Brazil.

It is known that Dilma Roussef was part of the resistance movement against the military dictatorship — she herself claims to be proud of her past. The story published by Folha had a spam email as main source and showed the image of a (later proved to be fake) criminal record for Rousseff. The story — Dilma's group planned Delfim's kidnapping — was about Rousseff's alleged role in an event that never actually happened: the kidnapping of then Finance Minister, Delfim Netto.

The newspaper alleged that the information was found in the Public Archives of São Paulo State (DEOPS). That, however, is far from truth: the file simply does not exist in the public archives. A simple investigation would have shown that the file was a fake — for starters, the “captured” stamp was not used on this kind of file from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS).

Even worse: when the paper published the story, the image had been circulating on the Internet for more than a year  mostly in extreme right-wing websites, such as Ternuma (Terrorismo Nunca Mais, “Terrorism never more”) , a site that supports Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra (the first Brazilian military officer to be declared a torturer in a judicial sentence) and that posted the fake file on the 30 November 2008.

The reaction to the story was immediate. All over the Internet blogs and sites started to question the information and the newspaper. Dilma Rousseff sent a letter to Folha de S.Paulo asking for clarification and presenting expert analyses proving the fraud. The paper neglected to publish it.

Mistakes do happen in journalism but one can’t help but wonder: why the largest newspaper in Brazil would so promptly publish such a serious denouncement without proper investigation? Was it only a naïve error or does the newspaper have other motivations? Even more important: if José Serra was the subject of story, would Folha de S.Paulo have acted the same way it did?

More than one year later, Folha never took responsibility for setting aside good journalistic standards. It still claims to produce impartial journalism. The only attempt at retraction by the newspaper was published on 25 April, twenty days after the fake file appeared on the front page. The text, entitled “Dilma file's authenticity not proven”, affirmed that the file’s authenticity “cannot be proved — just as it cannot be denied”.

If the paper really wanted to completely abdicate from assuming responsibility for its acts, they should have put it in simpler terms: “we just preferred to publish the legend!”

 A humorous fake file of José Serra produced by blogger André Lux: its authenticity “cannot be proved — just as it cannot be denied”. Would Folha de S.Paulo publish it?

I read the news today, oh boy!

Some of the most wise advices I ever heard about journalism came from a teacher during my second year in the journalism course: "There are only two persons in the world that you can know for sure will read your text line by line until the end: your editor and your mother. But always write having all the other people in mind".

The advice was meant to illustrate the importance of organizing and prioritizing the information in your text. The idea is to present the most important message at the top of the story — the so called "Inverted Pyramid" .

Like all the major written media members in Brazil, the daily newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, which has the second largest circulation in the city of São Paulo, and the sixth largest overall in Brazil, follows the inverted pyramid rule. This can be observed on an article of 05/30/2010 about the economic progresses of members of lower classes in Brazil:

"Classe emergente festeja progressos" (Emerging class celebrates progress)
Full article available on the link: http://www.estadao.com.br/estadaodehoje/20100530/not_imp558917,0.php

Bellow the headline, the text reads: "With easier access to credit and the growing purchasing power, their life has improved, but there is no need to vote for Dilma". Instead of focusing on the main point of the story - that is, the economic advances of the lower classes during President Lula's administration - the newspaper uses the noblest space of the story, right after the headline, to send their readers a message. And the message is: the economic has advanced, alright, but that's no reason to vote for Dilma Rousseff (or, in other words, not to vote for José Serra).

Talk about impartiality, uh?




Suggested soundtrack: "A day in the life", The Beatles

The myth of impartiality

In the book The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times, Gay Talese writes what I consider the best description of what being a journalist means:

"Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. The sane scene that is much of life, the great portion of the planet unmarked by madness, does not lure them like riots and raids, crumbling countries and sinking ships, bankers banished to Rio and burning Buddhist nuns - gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis."

Therefore, the unusual is an essential element to decide what is "news". This is summarized in the sentence "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news", coined by Alfred Harmsworth, a British newspaper magnate (and also attributed to New York Sun editor John B. Bogart).

When it comes to elections, the general impression is that all around there are dogs being bitten by men and the media chooses the ones that best suit their interests to write about. In the USA, it is not uncommon for the mass media to openly declare vote for a candidate during elections. In Brazil, the attitude is different. In most cases, the representatives of the Brazilian mass media try to consolidate an image of impartiality that not only does not correspond to reality but also would be simply unreachable in practical terms.

Carta Capital magazine formally declared support for Lula during the 2002 and 2006 presidential elections. In 2010, the magazine is openly aligning with president Lula's candidate, Dilma Roussef. The magazine Primeira Leitura also declared its support for José Serra in 2002 (presidential elections) and 2004 (city hall). However, most media representatives try to pass as impartial, while it is clear that they have a central viewpoint throughout all election coverage and that the way they present their stories often mirrors the political views they try to instil in the public.

Media and Power

The media plays an essential role in a democratic society. It is often considered an alleged "fourth power", a power outside government that have the ability to sway the public opinion in almost any chosen direction. Authors Anthony Mughan and Richard Gunther define the mass communications media as the "connective tissue of democracy" in the book "Democracy and the media: a comparative perspective". In an age of immediate demand for information, the media plays a crucial role in informing the public about politics, especially during elections. The power of the media becomes even more evident during elections: the media helps influence what issues voters should care about in elections and what criteria they should use to evaluate candidates. In the analyses of Anthony Mughan and Richard Gunther:

The paradox of the contemporary political communications media is that they helped to sound the death knell of authoritarian or posttotalitarian regimes by fostering political pluralism, thereby helping to spread democracy, but within established democracies they have failed to live up to their potential to improve the quality of democracy. Despite the dramatic technological advances of the past few decades, which have moved in tandem with higher education levels in most countries, the richer political pluralism and the more active, better-informed citizenry that many observers predicted (e.g., Pool 1983) have failed to materialize. Indeed, in some countries (especially the United States), the trend has been toward ever lower levels of political participation and higher levels of political participation and higher levels of cynicism toward democratic politics per se. The key to understanding this paradox is the recognition that the communications media are precisely that - a channel through which information flows to citizens. The political effects of this information are shaped by the interaction between its use by elites and the receptivity of individual citizens who are the target of political messages. While we have surveyed a number of technological, economic, and social-structural factors that influence the impact of the media on political behavior, we conclude that the most decisive determinants of media effects are the strategies and behavior of elites, particularly political elites.

In Brazil, there are a few peculiarities to be added to the scenery. Democracy and freedom of speech are elements relatively new in the country: from 1964 to 1989, Brazil was under a military dictatorship that controlled all the information disseminated by the mass media. Most of the political elite that was part of the dictatorship remains involved in politics until this date, since in Brazil the end of the dictatorship was accompanied by amnesty to both members of the resistance against dictatorship and members of the dictatorship alike. Apart from this, all major Brazilian media institutions belong to traditional families that are part of the country's elite. In the definition of historian Raymundo Faoro, author of the book Os Donos do Poder (The Owners of Power), "The Brazilian elite is in favour of sellouts" ("A elite brasileira é entreguista"). Faoro pointed out the existence of a patrimonialist estate in Brazil that emerged from the decline of the landed class and became dominant after the country attained its independence. Faoro analyses that the patrimonialist bureaucracy endorsed the formation of a national project that was not concerned with the national interests, but only with the interests of the elite itself.

As a result of all this elements, the Brazilian mass media is completely aligned with the elite's interests. And that speaks volumes about the way the elections are covered by the media.

Suggested soundtrack: "What's in the headlines", Don Covay.

The Brazilian Media and Liberty Valance

Released in 1962, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is one of the most famous movies directed by John Ford. In the story, a senator, who became famous for killing a notorious outlaw, returns to town for the funeral of an old friend and decides to tell a reporter the truth about his deed.

At some point, the editor of the local newspaper is questioned about what is going to be published. His answer: This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Trailer from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). Directed by John Ford, the movie brought together two of the biggest Hollywood stars of the time, James Stewart and John Wayne. Its lessons on ethics is still very popular among Brazilian journalists.

We don't live in the West, but Brazilian Media seems to have followed the advice when it comes to Presidential Elections. While trying to pass as impartial and uncommitted, it is clear that the major media representatives in Brazil make an effort to influence the public opinion favoring one candidate. This blog was created to discuss this reality, from the point of view of a Brazilian voter whose candidate is not the one elected as favorite by the media (and who also happens to be a journalist).

This project is part of the Comunicação Escrita 1 course by Professor Lynn Mario.