Veja: “Crudest Lead in History of Brazilian Journalism.”

“Straight-razor to the quick: the thread of the anticorruption operations has already [chopped off the head] of [the owner of Gautama] and [the minister of Mines and Energy] and now is nearing the neck of the President of the Senate.” Violent imagery straight from the media playbook of Mexico’s Gente Nueva. The article does not accuse the Senator of any relationship to Gautama, however. It accuses him of accepting money from a big construction firm, Mendes Junior. Source? None stated. Mr. Dines deduces it was the man’s girlfriend’s sleazy palimony lawyer, seen recently on the Jornal Nacional.

Since it had no evidence of the Alagoan politician’s ties with the Gautama scheme, the newsweekly went after his supposed ties to another contractor, Mendes Júnior. And as the editor could not ignore the explosive potential of the federal police operation, he mixed apples and oranges in one of the crudest leads in the history of Brazilian investigative journalism.

Alberto Dines of Brazil’s Observatório da Imprensa — if Brazilian journalism has deans, he’s certainly one of them — assesses Veja’s recent “the Senator has a love child!” scoop.

See Veja: The Senator Had Sex! But Is He Screwed?

Translating Mr. Dines, I am always tempted to give him the voice of a crusty, Yiddishism-spouting old-school New York newspaperman from a fast-talking screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s. “What a mishegaas!” Like Zoidberg on Futurama, but less, you know, giddy and hapless.

It was interesting, meanwhile to read several stories from newspapers in other Latin American countries on the story.

Most framed the story purely as a sex scandal: Senator Calheiros was forced to admit that he had a child out of wedlock with a federal district journalist and was paying support. Which is about how I reckon it myself.

Really, the whole affairs reminds me of nothing so much as the Clinton fellatio crisis, which arose tangentially out of an investigation of a decades-old real estate deal.

You would think that that incident might have taught our Brazilian friends something, however: Clinton’s approval ratings remained strong, even though people disapproved of his personal conduct. Which was, without a doubt, really, really foolish and despicable. Much more despicable, really, than a grown man having an affair with a grown woman. He bonked a young intern. What a loser. He could probably have seduced Cherie Blair if he more self-confidence and ambition.

As to Veja’s accusations about the illicit source of those support payments: they have not been proved, no new information has come out to rebut the Senator’s partial accounting for the money — he is coming back tomorrow to try to account for the rest of the money — and Veja offered absolutely no evidence at all to support them in the first place.

Absolutely none.

Ecce Veja.

Veja tinha pressa: precisava mostrar que não foi ultrapassada na Operação Navalha. Sentia-se na obrigação, sobretudo, de mostrar que tem futuro este tipo de jornalismo semanal da qual se tornou expoente no Brasil. Ou mais futuro do que o do jornalismo diário. Nessas maratonas, quem perde sempre é o maratonista.

Veja was in a hurry. It needed to show that it had not gotten caught flat-footed on the Operation Straight Razor story. If felt obliged, above all, to show that the type of weekly journalism of which it has become the exponent in Brazil has a future. Or more of a future than daily journalism, at least. In marathons like this, however, the marathoner always loses.

A decisão de antecipar de sábado (26) para sexta (25/5) a data de saída da edição nº 2010 pretendia substituir pelo impacto e a surpresa as falhas e omissões na denúncia contra o presidente do Senado, Renan Calheiros. Um ou dois dias a mais na investigação e, principalmente, um texto mais cuidado e uma edição menos afobada teriam dado à matéria mais consistência e menos semelhança com o que se convencionou chamar de jornalismo de apelação, marrom ou amarelo.

The decision to move up the publication date of Issue No 2010 from Saturday to Friday aimed to gloss over the failures and omissions of its charges against Sen. Calheiros with high-impact and surprise. One or two more days of investigating and — and this is the main thing — more careful writing and less hasty editing might have given the article more consistency and and made it less like what it is the custom to call “colored” journalism, whether brown or yellow.

The expression “yellow” journalism came from the color a notorious scandal-rag was printed on in the late 19th century. In Brazil, the notorious papers apparently looked more like the FT or the New York Observer. Accidents of history.

Como ainda não dispunha de provas sobre as ligações do político alagoano com o esquema da Gautama, o semanário foi atrás das suas eventuais ligações com outra empreiteira, a Mendes Júnior. E como o redator não poderia ignorar o potencial explosivo das navalhadas da Polícia Federal, misturou alhos com bugalhos numa das aberturas mais toscas do nosso jornalismo investigativo.

Since it had no evidence of the Alagoan politician’s ties with the Gautama scheme, the newsweekly went after his supposed ties to another contractor, Mendes Júnior. And as the editor could not ignore the explosive potential of the federal police operation, he mixed apples and oranges in one of the crudest leads in the history of Brazilian investigative journalism.

This is exactly what I thought. But as I am an obscure hack and Mr. Dines is a dean of journalism, I am happy to find that my feeble mind was thinking along the same lines as a great one.

Campeonato antipizza

The antipizza championship

Em quatro páginas profusamente ilustradas para dar volume, nenhum documento. Apenas a acusação, sem aspas ou fonte, de que um dos diretores da construtora Mendes Júnior, Cláudio Gontijo, pagava em dinheiro contas pessoais do senador.

On four pages, profusely illustrated to pad out the article, not a single piece of documentary evidence. Merely the accusation, without quotes or sourcing, that one of the Mendes directors, a Mr. Gontijo, paid personal expenses of the senator with cash.

I thought not. I was not able to locate any in a quick read-through, but I cannot stomach reading Veja for more than 3 minutes at a time.

In the wake of the Judy Miller debacle, Bill Keller of the New York Times issued a memo on “Assuring our Credibility” (June 23, 2005). On sourcing, he wrote:

“Our policy on anonymous sources is a good one, and bears repeating. It begins: “We resist granting anonymity except as a last resort to obtain information that we believe to be newsworthy and reliable.” The information should be of compelling interest, and unobtainable by other means. We resist granting anonymity for opinion, speculation or personal attacks.”

Replace “resist” with “insist on”; strike the exception clause; and insert positive disdain for whether the information is reliable or not, and there you have the Veja philosophy of journalism in a nutshell.

Depois do Jornal Nacional de segunda-feira (28/5) percebe-se que a fonte da Veja foi o advogado da jornalista Mônica Veloso (beneficiária daqueles pagamentos e com quem o senador teve uma filha). Este advogado foi o único a contestar no telejornal da Globo (e mesmo assim por telefone) a defesa que Renan Calheiros fizera naquela tarde no Senado.

After watching Globo’s evening newscast on Monday, one could see that Veja’s source was the lawyer for the journalist who received those payments and who bore the senator a daughter. This attorney was the only person to challenge the defense that Calheiros gave in the Senate that day — and he did it by telephone, to boot.

Renan Calheiros apresentou alguns documentos em sua defesa, tentando mostrar que os pagamentos à jornalista eram seus e não de terceiros. Mas deixou lacunas, conforme se evidenciou logo em seguida.

Calheiros presented some documents in his defense, trying to show that the payments he made to the journalist did not come from third parties. But he left gaps, as soon became evident.

Significa que nas próximas semanas seremos obrigados a acompanhar uma telenovela contábil e ignóbil apenas porque a maior revista brasileira, por impaciência ou delírio (dá no mesmo), ao invés de investigar com seriedade deixou-se fascinar pela picardia e pela sordidez.

This means that in the coming weeks were are going to be obliged to watch an ignoble soap opera of [beancounting] merely because the largest-circulation newsmagazine in Brazil, whether out of impatience or delirium (they amount to the same thing), rather than seriously investigating the matter, allowed itself to be hypnotized by the cheaply scandalous and sordid side of the story.

Na ânsia de comandar o espetáculo e assumir a liderança do campeonato antipizza, Veja pode estar contribuindo ardilosamente para reforçar o imenso coro de políticos assustados com o rigor da PF e que, por isso, reclamam contra os seus “excessos”.

In its anxiety to run the show and assume the leadership of the antipizza tournament standings, Veja may be cleverly working to reinforce the swelling chorus of politicians who are frightened by the federal police and are therefore speaking out against its “excesses.”

On “pizza” — an amazingly good and simple metaphor for a complicated phenomeon — see Brazil: Extra-Large Pizza With Everyone On It?

Burocráticas, autarquizadas

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Se não for sabotada ou manipulada, a Operação Navalha tem condições de reprimir ou, pelo menos, atenuar o saque multissecular ao erário que tornou o país um dos mais injustos do mundo. Junto, deverá alterar decisivamente a forma de fazer política, administrar orçamentos e estabelecer um padrão mínimo de decência no poder público.

If not sabotaged or manipulated, Straight Razor has a chance of putting an end to, or at least attenuating, the age-old sack of the public treasury that has turned Brazil into one of the most unjust nations in the world. It could also decisively change how politics are done, how budgets are managed and how the minimum standard of decency for public servants is defined.

Sem navalhadas, mas devidamente equipada para produzir a indispensável ressonância, a imprensa desempenha um papel não menos crucial neste saneamento cívico. Em quase duas semanas de intensa cobertura, a mídia cometeu poucos deslizes – alguns por culpa das simplificações propiciadas pelos infográficos – mas não está conseguindo passar à sociedade a premente e inadiável necessidade do “basta!”.

Leaving the straight razor in the bathroom, but otherwise duly equipped to amplify the message, the press has a no less important role to play in this civic cleaning of the stables. In nearly two weeks of intense coverage, the media has committed few slip-ups — some of them owing to oversimplifications abetted by infographics — but still are not managing to convey to society the pressing and urge need to say, “enough!”

G1/Globo “infographic”: graphics, which consist entirely of cheesy stock imagery (above, guys in suits from a 1950s Brooks Bros. catalogue, it looks like) and a few standard perp-walk photos — police hauling bags of evidence, wearing their windbreakers — convey no actual information. Interactive multimedia for interactive multimedia’s sake: Globo. I know Tufte has been translated into Portuguese. Go read the guy’s books. They’re fun. And instructive.

As primeiras páginas são burocráticas, autarquizadas, concebidas para atender às imposições da segmentação dos públicos e respectivos cadernos. Em nossas redações ninguém lembra mais do poder de um editorial de primeira página, candente e universal, capaz de sacudir os atentos e desatentos, teens e idosos, socialites e sindicalistas, rurais e urbanos, artistas e economistas. Jornalismo sem capacidade de convocação perde até para a virtualidade do Second Life.

The front pages are full of the jargon of bureaucrats, of the independent agencies, conceived in response to the segmentation of the market and the division of labor among the various sections. No one in our newsrooms remembers any longer the power of a front-page editorial, white-hot and universal, capable of shaking people awake: the sleepers and the insomniacs, the teenagers and the elderly, the socialites and the unionists, the country bumpkins and the urbanites, the artists and the economists. Journalism without a capacity to move people loses out even to the virtuality of Second Life.

I am not a fan of the Brazilian front-page editorial, myself, but I do enjoy a good jeremiad.

A mídia não tem os seus lobistas?

What, the media doesn’t lobby?

Virou palavrão: originalmente “grupo de pressão parlamentar”, lobby transformou-se em símbolo do tráfico de influência, a indústria mais lucrativa do país. E o lobista que, antigamente, se escondia atrás da “advocacia administrativa” virou agente da perversão.

It has become a dirty word: originally known as a “legislative pressure group,” the word “lobby” has come to symbolize influence-peddling, the most lucrative industry in Brazil. And the lobbyist who once hid behind the mask of “administrative advocacy” has become an agent of perversion.

As empresas jornalísticas, porventura, não fazem lobby? Não oferecem projetos especiais aos grandes anunciantes – multinacionais ou estatais? Neste afã não corre o “por fora,” não ocorrem superfaturamentos, não se oferecem descontos de freqüência, prendas e mimos em troca de grandes faturamentos publicitários?

But what? Media corporations don’t do lobbying? They don’t offer special packages to big advertisers — multinational or state-owned? In their eagerness, they don’t cross the line? Overbilling never happens? Bulk discounts aren’t offered, gifts and inducements, in exchange for big advertising revenues?

E as entidades de comunicação, não atuam junto aos diferentes poderes da República em defesa de seus interesses particulares (nem sempre coincidentes com os da sociedade que deveriam representar)?

And the media companies don’t try to influence various branches of government in defene of their private interests (which do not always coincide with the interests of society, which they ought to represent)?

Assessores de comunicação não fazem lobby, não oferecem matérias exclusivas?

Public relations firms don’t lobby? They don’t offer exclusives?

E os lobbies das cervejeiras, das tabaqueiras, das armas e da indústria farmacêutica – para citar os mais contestados ultimamente – não oferecem vantagens, inclusive à mídia?

And the beer lobbies, the tobacco lobby, the firearms lobby, the pharma lobby — to cite the most controversial at the moment — do not offer inducements, including to the media?

Enquanto não se regulamentam os lobbies, conviria pensar no processo de diabolização das palavras.

Until lobbies are regulated, we ought to reflect on how words get demonized.