Brazil: Hysteria Industry Consolidation in the Air

Grupo Abril: “Brazil is polarized!”Editora Três: “Brazil is not polarized!” The balance of power of the dueling weekly noise machine duopoly is in play, say local observers.

The Blog do Mino, from the veteran Italo-Paulista newsmagazine maven who founded Carta Capital, provides a local clipping for the NMM “armed media monopoly” files: Daniel Dantas, alleged under-the-table employer of Leonardo Attuch the heroic martyr of Stalinist Persecution — see Crooked Journos: Continental Precursors for the global context of this item– wants to buy the parent company of IstoÉ magazine.

A Editora Três vive uma grave crise 35 anos depois da sua fundação. As notícias sobre negociações em curso para efetivar sua venda, depois de um largo período de boatos desencontrados, são públicas. Falou-se de dois possíveis compradores, Daniel Dantas e Nelson Tanure. É este, ao certo, quem teve as mais recentes conversações com o dono da Três, Domingo Alzugaray. O qual, anteontem, por intermédio do editor-chefe Carlos Marques, comunicou aos empregados da casa que as negociações estavam suspensas. Ocorre que em relação a certos pontos da discussão com Tanure em busca de um acordo surgiu uma divergência entre Alzugaray e seu filho Caco. Teria sido este o motivo da interrupção. Quem conhece Tanure, entende que ele sabe esperar o momento melhor para dar o bote.

Editora Três is in crisis, 35 years after its founding. News of the negotiations underway to sell it is now public knowledge, after a long period of unconfirmed rumors. Two possible buyers are being mentioned: Daniel Dantas and Nelson Tanure. But it is the latter, to be sure, who had the most recent talk with Domingo Alzugaray, the owner of the publishing house. Domingo, through editor in chief Carlos Marques, told his employees the day before yesterday that talks had been suspended. It happens that on certain points being discussed with Tanure in search of a deal, Domingo had a falling out with his son Caco. This was supposedly the reason for the interruption. Anyone who knows the father will understand that he knows how to wait for the most opportune moment to launch his shot on goal.

Also in the news: Globo’s primetime newscast, the Jornal Nacional, turns up a third-party inspection report on the welding work — it’s horrible! horrible! — at another station on the Yellow Line extension to the São Paulo subway, and runs it with lots of noise and fireworks.

The state government official in charge finds out about the existence of the report from the boob tube and makes a point of being shocked! shocked!

The Yellow Line Consortium (CVA) did not think the report was important enough to turn over.

The smoking hole in Pinheiros before it got even huger.

The state government immediately gave the CVA 14 days to complete a safety report on the entire project.

Failure to comply could lead to cancellation of the $2 billion contract. Criminal charges of reckless endangerment are working their way through the public advocate’s (MP) office, one reads.

I have here somewhere a copy of the local Pinheiros giveaway paper for residents and merchants, featuring pages and pages of murky amateur photos, backdated to well before the smoking hole incident, purporting to document cracks, fissures, and minicollapses in residential and commercial properties all along the Yellow Line.

The story is that they were dynamiting like crazy in close proximity to loose landfill that was never properly surveyed. And that they resolved to take that stretch of track underground rather than elevated, as would have been best engineering practice along what was once a wandering rivercourse, in order to spare what the project was expected to turn into prime real estate.

But the real hysteria this week is swirling around a nasty little case of true crime from Rio de Janeiro.

A group of teenaged afavelados hijacked a family car with a toy gun, then apparently — the facts are not in yet, but hey, that never stopped the Organizações Capivara Globo before — neglected to free a six year old boy from his seat belt before peeling out.

The boy was dragged seven km and died.

So now there’s blood in the water in Congress over a measure to lower the age of adult criminal responsibility to 16, and a general wailing, gnashing of the teeth and changing of the subject while filibustering.

The mass-moronic media is schocked! shocked!

The same mass-moronic media that cannot be troubled even to locate or count the corpses of crossfire victims as off-duty cops swap military-grade ammunition with on-duty cops in the favelas of Rio.

Or to reconstruct a human face for the bloated floaters that end up washing up onto the idyllic beachfront properties of Guanabara Bay.

The collective wringing of hands is like the massed wings of a biblical plague of locusts, consuming the biodiesel corn from Oipaque to Chuí and thereby dooming the planet to perish by both fire and ice.

The notion that the federal government has completely neglected public security in the last five years is injected with fresh botox and trotted out as queen of the carnival drum corps.
You can time the turning of the earth by the ebb and flow of these manic media causes célèbres here in Brazil.

The last one was the death of a Sâo Paulo supermodel by anorexia.

It is, in other words, a classic “poster child for change” campaign.

Likewise, the yearly flooding here in Brazil — the only thing more predictable than the annual ritual footage of vast flood plains with zebu starving on islands is the annual flood of investigative reports on why lack of planning is to blame — coupled with the UN report, is now the end of the freaking world!

Never mind that the really story here is basically Hurricane Katrina stretched out for 50 years, without anybody ever giving a good goddamn about it before.

The TV cameras have arrived to put a human face on the tragedy! The crisis is immanent!

On that general subject, the online publication Fazendo Mídia is out today with a letter to the journalists unions and the trade association for Brazilian media owners:

Vimos através desta carta manifestar nossa solidariedade à família do menino João Hélio e a todas as outras famílias que perderam entes queridos de maneira violenta. Mas também gostaríamos de registrar nosso veemente repúdio às agressões cometidas na terça-feira (13) por profissionais da grande imprensa contra os acusados de matar João, de acordo com noticia divulgada pelo jornal O Estado de São Paulo desta quarta-feira (14).

With this letter, we wish to express our condolences with the family of João Helio [the victim in the aforementioned crime] and with other families that have lost loved ones to violence. But we would also like to register our vehement rejection of the aggressions committed on Tuesday, Feb. 13 by mass-media professionals against the suspects accused of killing João, according to an item published by the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper on Wed., Feb. 14.

Primeiro, por não ser esta a função dos profissionais de imprensa. Em segundo lugar, porque esta atitude descabida coloca em risco a atividade de todos os jornalistas que trabalham na área policial. Em terceiro, porque os acusados ainda não foram nem mesmo julgados para serem condenados. E, em quarto lugar, pelo ato covarde e burro, que não vai contribuir para resolver a situação da violência no Rio de Janeiro ou no Brasil.

First of all, this is not the job of reporters. Secondly, because this unbridled attitude places at risk the work of all journalists who report on police matters. Thirdly, because the accused have not yet been tried or found guilty. Fourthly, because this was a cowardly and stupid act that is not going to help resolve the problem of violence in Rio or in Brazil. 

Essa situação, entretanto, não é nova. Há bastante tempo jornalistas da grande imprensa vêm ouvindo apenas a polícia e deixando de entrar em determinadas áreas para apurar outras versões, como rezam os manuais de redação. Assim, muitas vezes trabalhadores honestos aparecem nas páginas de jornais como se fossem bandidos. Como resultado, muitos moradores dessas regiões passam a enxergar nos jornalistas inimigos que devem ser combatidos, o que torna a nossa profissão cada vez mais perigosa.

This is not a new situation, either. For some time now journalists from the mass media have listened only to the side of the story told by police and refused to enter certain areas to hear other sides of the story, as manuals of good journalistic practice dictate. Thus, honest working folks often show up in the newspaper as bandits. As a result, many residents of these areas come to view journalists as enemies who need to be combatted, which makes our job all the more dangerous.

Caco Barcellos recounts a hair-raising story along these lines in Rota 66 (1993), which broke the story of “resistance followed by death” — and impunity — among the São Paulo military police, and led Mr. Barcellos to live abroad for several years.

Ademais, é lamentável constatar que a irracionalidade de certas publicações esteja assumindo novas formas. Agora, além do linchamento editorial ao qual supostos bandidos pobres são submetidos, um grupo de profissionais de imprensa resolve partir para a agressão física – o que não acontece com assassinos bem relacionados, como Pimenta Neves, que e réu confesso e matou a própria namorada pelas costas.

 What is more, the hysteria of certain publications may be reaching new hieghts. Now, alongside the editorial lynch mob to which alleged criminals are subjected, you have a group of journalists deciding to resort to physical assault — something you did not see in cases like that of Pimenta Neves, who confessed his crime and killed his own girlfriend in an underhanded manner.

Esperamos que o Sindicato dos Jornalistas Profissionais do Rio de Janeiro e a Associação Brasileira de Imprensa manifestem-se e adotem as medidas cabíveis.

We hope that the Union of Professional Journalists of Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) will take a position on this issue and adopt the appropriate measures.