From The Globo Dossier: Kucinski Passes Kamel Through Eye of Needle

Veja parody issue, dated September 25, 1929. “NYSE: A safe investment with guaranteed returns. Also in this issue: Nazi plans for building the world’s safest airship!” Source: Desiclopedia (Brazil)

When Ali Kamel, executive director of Global Journalism Central, reacted with indignation to a recent article by Bernado Kucinski in the Agência Carta Maior, the following was the article he was reacting indignantly to.

In my reading of it, the only point of fact in this account by Kucinski that Kamel contests is that he traveled to Brasília.

See

• Ali Kamel: “It Is a Lie To Say That Globo Journalism Central Tried To Centralize Globo Journalism”

The case of what to do with Radiobrás is an interesting one, around which much debate has swirled, polarized around two positions

1. What good is being the government if you cannot use the govenrment broadcasting system to drum up support for your government?
2. Radiobrás ought to be more like PBS or C-SPAN

I actually think the Agência Brasil compares favorably to Voice of America in terms of role and quality — and mind you, I tend to think that in the pre-Bush era, VOA was actually something to be sort of proud of. What might be more interesting would be to compare its evolution with the history of something like Notimex (Mexico) or Tass (The Greater Slavic Hobbesian State of Nature Zone).

One thing I can say about the AB is that I really do think it has the best-designed news Web site you will see just about anywhere. I always glance at it, if only for that reason: You can see everything that is one it at a glance, some of which is even interesting and useful at times.

But to Kucinski’s analysis of Globol hegemony now:

How Globo defined the single, dominant narrative of the “big monthly allowance”crisis

Globo’s journalism center in Brasília, say journalists who work inside Globo, formed a sort of “crisis cabinet” with opposition leaders, including ACM Neto and Paes de Andrade. Closing Radiobrás was a prime example of the major errors in the communications policy of the Lula administration. Analysis by Bernardo Kucinski.

Bernardo Kucinski

During the Lula years, the media abandoned its role as a broker of political power and began acting directly as an opposition political party. Though they fiercely dispute market share among themselves, there is more programmatic unity among the barons of the press than there is in any other Brazilian political party, even such ideologically-oriented parties as the PT and the PSOL. All of the major outlets, without exception, support privatizations, the curbing of government spending, the reduction of taxes; the achievement of a trade surplus, and the entry of Brazil into NAFTA; all are opposed to the idea of a sovereign fund, to controls on the entry of foreign capital, to the Bolsa Família income subsidy, to affirmative action for blacks, Indians and students from public schools in the universities, to the entry of Venezuela in the Mercosul and to the Mercosul itself. All systematically criticize all areas of the the government, no matter what the government does or does not do.

In the massive press campaign that drove Getúlio Vargas to suicide, the government still counted on the support of one powerful national newspaper chain, Wainer’s Última Hora. Today, there is no such exception to the rule among the major newspapers. Another difference today is the widespread adherence of journalists to the positions of the political opposition, and their dissemination of those positions through all forms of media, making these journalists a sort of professional subculture. Egged on by publishers, praised by successful journalists and led by the columnists, the organic intellectuals of the newsrooms, this subculture developed its own modes of narrative and its own jargon.

Rio: “Militias Expand Into the Green Zone”

Message from the Night Vigilante, delivered to our doorstep here in São Paulo: “The peace of mind and tranquility of your esteemed family is worth much more than any modest monthly fee.” (”Smoking Marlboros can cause pickled babies in a jar.”) See also São Paulo Diary: The Avenue of the Owls Irregulars.

Milícias estendem campo de ação a bairros ricos do Rio, diz ‘El País’ — O Globo carries a story from BBC Brasil according to which El País (Spain) reports that “militias” — diversified paramilitary criminal enterprises, with pizzo protection rackets as their core business, run by active-duty and retired police, firemen and military personnel — are expanding into upscale neighborhoods in Rio.

O Globo has reporters who live in the neighborhoods in question — hell, Larry Rohter of the New York Times still lives in Copacabana, as far as I know — but winds up running a story at third-hand on the subject rather than reporting it directly.

To be fair, however, it could well be that the fact that the reporters live in neighborhoods where death-squads are making inroads explains why they do not report the story directly.

They know where you live.

This is not a new story, either, by the way:

• Rio: “Palace Guard and Militiaman Pimped Child Sex Slaves on Upscale Beach”
• Rio: “San Francisco Cops Report Copacabana Shakedown”
• Rio: Militias Hit the Green Zone

Uma reportagem do jornal El País destaca nesta segunda-feira o crescimento de “milícias” em bairros ricos do Rio de Janeiro.

A report in El País this Monday shines a spotlight on the growth of “militias” in upscale Rio neighborhoods.

Até então considerado um fenômeno das favelas, os “grupos clandestinos de vigilância patrulham os bairros nobres da cidade brasileira e extorquem seus habitantes em troca de segurança”, diz o artigo, publicado na versão online do diário espanhol.

Considered until now a phenomenon of the shantytowns, these “clandestine vigilante groups patrol upscale neighborhoods of the Brazilian city, extorting residents in exchange for security,” the article, published in the online version of the Spanish daily, reports.

Segundo o correspondente do jornal no Rio, moradores de bairros como Copacabana, Leblon, Ipanema e Botafogo têm recebido cartas de grupos – que se denominam “grupos de apoio” – pedindo dinheiro para garantir a vigilância da rua.

According to the paper’s Rio correspondent, residents of areas such as Copacabana, Leblon, Ipanema and Botofogo have been getting letters from groups — they call themselves “support groups” — asking for money to guarantee that there is a watchman on the street.

In case you think I am engaging in “headline panic” here, I have just such a letter sitting here on my desk here in São Paulo. Just such a letter.

Nassif: Veja Starts to Eat Its Young

Veja magazine, March 2002: “The Dossier Wars: Politicians and spies have set up a slander industry in Brazil.” Right: And Veja has evolved into that industry’s Yoyodyne. Ask Veja about the work that Jairo Martins later did for it (and testified to a congressional committee about).

Luis Nassif (Brazil), who has written extensively about Veja magazine as a symptom of what is horribly wrong with contemporary Brazilian mass-market journalism, offers this bit of Kremlinology today.

Os ataques que André Petry (colunista da Veja) está sofrendo nos blogs de Veja – através de comentários anônimos – mostra uma guerra surda em jogo.

The attacks on Veja columnist André Petry on the blogs at Veja.com — through anonymous comments — shows that a silent struggle in the darkness is underway at the magazine.

Não conheço Petry, nunca falei ou me correspondi com ele, mas para qualquer leitor salta à vista seu nível, superior à dos demais diretores da revista.

I do not know Petry, and have never spoken or corresponded with him, but any reader would find it strikingly obvious that his journalism is superior to that practiced by other senior editors at the magazine.

O uso de Blogs para atacá-loa, através de comentários anônimos, é um indício de guerra interna, tão sem limites quanto às guerras externas articuladas pela direção da revista.

The use of blogs to attack him, through anonymous comments, is a sign of internecine conflict at Veja, carried on with the same lack of scruples that characterizes the external smear campaigns coordinated by the magazine’s senior editors.

Repito: em 38 anos de jornalismo jamais presenciei um jogo tão violento e despudorado quanto o praticado pela atual direção da revista.

I repeat: In 38 years as a journalist, I have never witnessed the sorts of unscrupulous and violent games played by the current editors of Veja.

VarigLog: Shadows and Fog

If Gol and TAM thought jumping up and down on the corpse of Varig was going to guarantee them a domestic duopoly, they must not have been counting on Trip and Azul.

(Attorney and lobbyist Roberto)Texeira’s role was much more that of the Fool than of a Rasputin in the court of the crimson petistas.

The Gazeta Mercantil (Brazil) — owned by a gentleman, Nelson Tanure, who once had designs of his own on the assets of the failed Varig airlines — analyzes the latest developments in the so-called “VarigLog scandal.”

I mention it only because I tend to clip stories about foreign firms who end up in the middle of political brouhahas — what the consultancies like to call “political risk.” Cisco suffered embarrassment of this kind last year, in a case involving alleged tax evasion by its privately held Tupi subsidiary, and more recently, Alstom and Agrenco have come to grief in similar ways in the court of public opinion.

Reading the Brazilian papers, what the cases have in common, apart from the merits of the formal accusations, is that you are going to have be very good at reading between the lines if you want to figure out the simple who, what, when, where, why and how of them, just from reading most Brazilian newspapers, which tend to feel they need soap opera plots, not shades of gray, to keep their readerships infotained.

An executive of U.S. “distressed equity” firm MatlinPatterson, which, along with three local partners, acquired the VarigLog freight subsidiary, used it to launch an LBO of the parent company, then sold the parent company to Gol Airlines — which seems like a creative bit of deal-making, from a purely technical point of view — finds himself in the midst of a Jacobean revenger’s tragedy staged by the local press, which has focused an enormous amount of attention on the $385 million deal.

See also

• Veja on Varig: Doubling Down the Error on TAM “Offer”
• The Great Varig Swindle That Wasn’t: “Veja Has Once More Trashed Its Own Credibility”
• Auto da Fe on Tupi C-SPAN: The Curious Case of VarigLog
• Matlin’s Man on the “The Varig Scandal”

I am just clipping and translating this item, mind you; I do not claim to fully understand the deal in question. I do know that Matlin and its Brazilian partners are fighting in court over how to divvy up the proceeds from the deal.

Which tends to make me wonder whether this is not just one of those cases in which litigants with reporter friends wage infowar against their adversaries. Happens a lot here, apparently. Luis Nassif writes about this phenomenon a lot.

O noticiário sobre os problemas que a VarigLog enfrenta migrou das páginas de economia para a de política dos jornais brasileiros. A comprovação da presença do advogado Roberto Teixeira, em pelo menos seis diferentes ocasiões, no Palácio do Planalto, tem sido o combustível das manchetes.

News coverage of the problems VarigLog faces has migrated from the business pages to the politics section of Brazilian newspapers. Confirmation of attorney Roberto Teixeira’s presence, on at least six occasions, in meetings with the federal president, has fueled the headlines.

O reconhecimento público do pagamento de honorários superiores a US$ 5 milhões pagos pelo fundo Matlin Patterson e pelas suas diferentes empresas transforma o advogado da região do Grande ABC em dono de uma das mais bem remuneradas bancas de advocacia de toda a América do Sul.

His public acknowledgment that he received fees in excess of $5 million from MatlinPatterson and its various subsidiaries has transformed the lawyer from the ABC Paulista into senior partner in one of the richest law offices in South America.

Não se trata de um raro caso do “estalo de Vieira”, que de uma hora para outra transformou Roberto Teixeira em detentor de um inquestionável saber jurídico, capaz de remunerar literalmente o seu peso em ouro. Ao contrário do padre jesuíta português Antônio Vieira, que de uma hora para outra se viu tocado pelo dom divino da eloqüência, o advogado ganhou os seus primeiros milhões por meio da capacidade de abrir portas palacianas.

This is not just some rare case of [proverbial Brazilian shaggy dog story], in which Teixeira was magically transformed from one moment to the next into learned counsel capable of asking for, and getting, his weight in gold. Unlike the Jesuit father Vieira, who suddenly and miraculously received the divine gift of eloquence, the lawyer made his first millions thanks to his knack for opening palace doors.

Ali Kamel: “It Is a Lie To Say That Globo Journalism Central Tried To Centralize Globo Journalism”

Kamel.

Zé Dirceu notes an interesting exchange between Bernardo Kucinski, journalist and former Secretary of Communications of the Braziian federal executive, and Ali Kamel, director of journalism at Globo Journalism Central — a figure I have been known to refer to as “the most intellectually dishonest man in the Southern Hemisphere — over an article of Kucinski’s on the Web site of Carta Maior titled “Why the Lula Government Lost the Battle With the Media.”

On why I tend to think of Mr. Kamel in that way, see, for example,

• “Globo Gabbles on Communist Indoctrination Textbook Plague!”

I will translate Mr. Kamel’s retort and then later link to a translation of Mr. Kucinski’s think piece that I will post to Google Documents.

Aside from his stint as something akin to the Brazilian Tony Snow, Kucinski is a veteran journalist, USP professor, erstwhile PT PR strategist and author of Journalism in the Digital Era (just about every journalist turned academic has written that book by now) as well as a book I am currently reading on the alt.press during the dictatorship.

Kamel is executive director of Global Journalism Central, not just plain Comrade Ali of the Globo Anarchist Journalism Collective.

And yet he is deeply offended in his personal honor by the assertion that he would even dream of directing others to execute a plan to coordinate coverage across all of Globo’s news organizations from a central position.

Even though he has boasted, as most media groups do these days, of Globo’s investment in the technical means to do just that: Achieve synergies across all delivery platforms.

Go figure.

Kamel’s principal concern seems to be to rebut accusations — from former Globo employees, circulated widely for some time now, and rich in detail — that Globo ratfinked and blackballed staff members who failed to pass an internal loyalty check and ideological litmus test.

The most prominent of these Globo dissidents, in fact, wound up getting a Mike Wallace-style interviewer gig at the rival TV Record: Rodrigo Vianna. See

• Vianna Back Bashing Globo
• Rede Globo Ratfinks Dissident Journos
• Omertà: Globo Gonzalezes Another Top Editor
• “Dear John”: Rodrigo Mouths Off to Marinho Media Mafia
• Latgé Responds to Vianna

“Caro

My dear sir,

Fui citado no artigo de Bernardo Kucinski cujo título é “Por que o governo Lula perdeu a batalha da comunicação”. Em dado momento, ele diz: “Logo depois das denúncias de Roberto Jefferson, [a Globo] criou uma central de operações, em Brasília, unificando as coberturas de política da TV, CBN e jornal O Globo sob o comando de Ali Kamel, que para isso se deslocou para Brasília.”

I am cited in the article by Kucinski titled “Why the Lula government lost the media battle.” At a certain point, the author says: “Not long after Robert Jefferson make his charges public, Globo set up an operations center in Brasília to unify coverage by TV Globo, CBN radio, and the O Globo daily under the command of Ali Kamel, who traveled to Brasília for this purpose.

Isso simplesmente não é verdade, jamais aconteceu algo semelhante, é pura mentira. As redações dos veículos de comunicação das Organizações Globo são independentes, disputam a informação entre si palmo a palmo e são lideradas por direções próprias. Não há nenhum tipo de sinergia jornalística entre elas. Nenhum. Qualquer jornalista bem informado no Brasil é sabedor desta verdade. Franklin Martins, citado por Kucinski em outro contexto, hoje ministro do Governo Lula, era comentarista político da TV Globo durante o período do mensalão, e pode testemunhar que não coordenei central operacional alguma em Brasília e que permaneci em minhas funções no Rio de Janeiro.

That is simply not true. Nothing like that every happened. This is a pure lie. The newsrooms of the Globo Organizations are independent, compete among themselves for information, and are led by their own managers. There is no journalistic synergies among them. None whatsoever. Any well informed Brazilian journalism knows this to be true. Martins, cited by Kucinski and now a cabinet officer in the Lula government, was a Globo TV commentator during the “big monthly allowance” scandal, and can bear witness that I did not coordinate any operational center in Brasilia, but remained in Rio, going about my normal duties.

Globo fired Martins summarily, after which he became the Brazilian government’s equivalent of Tony Snow or Scott McClellan.

I am sure Martins would be overjoyed to rush to Kamel’s aid in this, his hour of need..

Well, anyway, the point is that almost none of this “editorial independence” nonsense jibes with what Kamel himself has said very loudly and insistently on this subject, or what one can observe simply from consuming Globo news products (always boiling them first to make sure they are fit for human consumption.)

Because for one thing, Kamel has actually described with great enthusiasm in the past the techncial ability of Journalism Central to step in and coordinate coverage in lockstep across all media at the drop of a hat: print, TV and radio.

He has expressed great admiration for a media consultantcy hired by Globo — and El País, and Libération, and many other global news organizations — to teach it how to do just that.

He has spoken glowingly of the editorial synergies this ability yields.

So if he denies doing it in the case in question, Kamel has certainly boasted in the past that overriding the editorial independence of the various Globo news organizations with the push of a single button is technically possible, and a really cool thing to be able to do. See

• Brazil: Ali Kamel on Opus Dei and Innovations in Postmodern Content Management

Character Assassination Veja-Style in the Diamond Fields of Rondônia?

“No to the invasion of Cinta Larga tribal land!” Bad trouble in diamond-rich regions of the far north.

“Newspapers are like revolvers: You keep them around so you can pull them out when it’s time to come out blasting.” — Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Colombian media owner; see “A Newspaper is Like a Gun”: Armed Media Monopolist No. 47

Jornalista de Rondônia ataca procurador e ameaça processar CartaCapital: “Rondônia journalist assails prosecutor and threatens legal action against Carta Capital.”

UOL’s Portal Imprensa reports. I mention in it because I collect weird tales of journalistic malpractice, the way that others collect butterflies, and because the dubious credibility of Veja magazine is once again at stake here.

Luis Nassif added this summary of the affair (my translation) on July 2:

• From the Veja Files: The Curious Case of the Rondonian Ratfink

A jornalista Ivonete Gomes, do site Rondoniagora, em artigo publicado na última quinta-feira (26), atacou violentamente o procurador da República em Rondônia, Reginaldo Pereira da Trindade, acusando-o de “retaliação”, “intimidação” e de ser ligado à senadora Fátima Cleide e ao Partido dos Trabalhadores.

Journalist Ivonete Gomes of the Rondoniagora Web site, in an article published on June 26, violently attacked the federal prosecutor in the northern state, Trinidade, accusing him of “retaliation” and “intimidation” and of having ties to Sen. Fátima Cleide and the Worker’s Party (PT).

No seu artigo, Ivonete diz que a senadora é “baixa” e “sorrateira”, além de “preguiçosa”, e ameaça processar a revista CartaCapital, que denunciou uma suposta armação envolvendo a jornalista, sua amiga Marlei Trifílio, o site Rondoniagora e o governador Ivo Cassol na tentativa de desmoralizar o procurador, responsável pelo ajuizamento de várias ações contra o chefe do Poder Executivo Estadual.

In his article, Ivonete calls the senator “low” and “sneaky,” as well as “lazy,” and threatens to bring legal action against CartaCapital magazine, which recently reported on the alleged collaboration among Ivonete, her friend Marilei Trifilio, the Rondoniagora Web site and state governor Ivo Cassol to assassinate the character of the prosecutor, who has filed various charges against the state’s chief executive.

Is It Pulp Yet? Contemporary Brazilian Popular Fiction

Cheap literary thrills at a price that’s not too polpudo.

I am constantly on the lookout for something decent and not too expensive to read in New World Lusophone.

Brazil lacks the sort of developed publishing and book distribution industry that produces, for example, the likes of Penguin editions or those cheap newsstand thrillers you buy to read on the Acela “bullet train” to Boston — a trip that that always takes a lot longer than the brochure would have you believe.

LP&M, for example, fills a niche for pocket classics something like that pioneer by the Penguin imprint after WWII, but its catalog is limited, and for some strange reason (not that I am complaining, mind you — I am a member of the Bukowski Memorial Society for Classic Latin Studies) Charles Bukowski is considered a classic here in Brazil.

Publifolha now has its own line of affordable classics (Machado de Assis, Jorge Amado, Guimarães Rosa) that you buy at newsstands, recalling the business model pioneered by Charles Dickens and early 20th century “popular library” brands in the U.S.

The only comparable “pulp” genre that really sells like hotcakes, in the meantime, are the local equivalents of the Harlequin Romance and its many imitators. “She gazed into the plumber’s deep green eyes and felt a shiver run through her body. The oven mitt dropped from her hand without her even being aware that it had.”

This is mainly an effect of unchecked cartel behavior in the publishing industry, I would venture to guess. The Editora Abril, for example, controls 100% of print distribution in São Paulo, and not a peep out of the competition regulator, CADE, so far. Talk to local newsstand owners, though. You hear stories that remind you of that episode of The Sopranos in which the boys from the Bing try to extract protection money from a Starbucks. And worse.

I will have to see if there is anything on the CADE docket on the matter, though.

My wife, the short story hunger artist, will very likely be interested in this book. She has a mania for anthologies of genre fiction (her novel in progress involves UFOs and the forbidden dance, the lambada, among other colorful subjects.) And at R$20 for Vol. II, the price is notably reasonable by local standards.

Therefore I translate, draft-quality, the following review from the online Terra Magazine, which lives on the Terra (Brasil) Web portal and often has interesting things to say.

Pulp Fiction?

Roberto de Sousa Causo
Terra Magazine
São Paulo

Translated by C. Brayton
cbrayton@boizebueditorial.com

Pulp Fiction, Vol. I. Samir Machado de Machado, ed. Porto Alegre: Editora Fósforo, 2007, 131 pp. Cover art by Gisele Oliveira.

In literary terms, “pulp” refers to fiction printed on cheap paper, specializing in different genres whose common interest is to engaging the attention and play on the emotions of readers who are not afraid of a little adventure or melodrama, of the sensational or the marvelous. In Brazil in recent years, the notion of pulp fiction as a set of literary strategies and qualities has been revived and defended, becoming a sort of term of negotiation on the Brazilian speculative literature scene. Oddly, this is true not only in Brazil but in other countries as well.

What is so odd about that?

This week, we take a look at some examples in an attempt to understand this trend a little better.

Samir Machado de Machado, whom we interviewed here a couple of weeks back, has forced the issue with the publication of Pulp Fiction, Vols. 1 and 2, the first serial anthology of original Brazilian speculative fiction. He defines it, in his preface to Volume I, as “a collective efforts whose intention is … to promote and stimulate a speculative literature whose only agenda is to entertain the reader”, abandoning all “pedantic pretensions to assigning a greater signficance to fiction”. “What we really want”, he writes, “is, as American writer Michael Chabon says, ‘to blow the reader’s mind.’”.

Speed Eraser: Road Testing Net Serviços

Click to zoom. Upload speeds for broadband service providers in Brooklyn, New York -- our spiritual and temporal second home. Slowest: Road Runner at a little under 7 Mbps. Net Serviços, São Paulo, Brazil: 0.6 Mbps. In other words, Third World service at First World prices.

I have this sneaking suspicion, as you know, that NET Serviços, my cable broadband provider here in São Paulo, as we say in Brooklyn, sucks big-time. See

• Navigating With NET Serviços: The Traffic Shaping of Things

Speedtest.net offers an online tool to measure upload and download speeds and compare them with other parts of the world and other service providers. Here is the result the gizmo produced for our location here in São Paulo:

Vai Tomar no Q: Record and Globo on Quality of Service

Q Is For Quality: Record and Globo in Semantic Octagon Match! (Google Video)

Dueling ad campaigns as the rivalry between Brazil’s two leading TV networks heats up. Here, upstart TV Record mocks and mimics the legendary (in its own mind) Globo Standard of Quality. Yes, I know the subtitles are fup duck. I am still getting the hang of this. Avidemux is supposed to take care of the line breaks automatically.

Hunger Artistry: Confirmation Bias At O Globo

“Globo innovates.” In point of fact, its three-card monte style of journalism tends to employ some of the oldest tricks in the book.

The Bolsa Familia and the Reality-Based Community: Confirmation bias at the O Globo daily (Brazil) is a case for the Wall Street Journal‘s Numbers Guy.

The Bolsa Familia Income Subsidy and Inflation

Luis Nassif and Luiz Eduardo
Projeto Brasil
June 28, 2008

Translated: C. Brayton
cbrayton@boizebueditorial.com

Translator’s comments in bold italics.

On the editorial by Ali “The Gnostic” Kamel whose creativity with the facts (it states nonexistent ones, for example) is complained of here, see

• Bolsa Familia: The Raw (Data) and the Cooked (Books)

The worst thing that can happen to a news publication is to become the slave of ideological theses that turn out to be inconsistent with the world as it is.

Such is the case with O Globo, after all the noise it made over those ideological theses of Ali Kamel’s, according to which the Bolsa Família program was only increasing the nonessential spending of the families benefited. The paper has “punch” in its news reporting, a team of decent columnists (when they manage to cease their endlessly political proselytizing for a minute or two), and respects factual accuracy, but the “prisoner of ideology” syndrome has caused it major problems.