Sambodian Checkbook Journalism: A Case

The daily Hoje em Dia of Bolo Horizonte sets out to out the competing Estado de Minas in a campaign espionage scandal rapidly going bad.

Some sleazy despachante in São Paulo had illegally obtained the tax data of the opposition candidate’s daughter, a Harvard-trained venture capitalist who specializes in e-commerce.

Veronica Serra has a seat on the board of Forbes magazine — the real one, back in the States — as well as an officer and director of an eBay-like network of sites, Mercado Livre/Libre, operating in Argentina and Brazil.

Daddy, also Harvard-trained — got to love that affirmative action policy for legacy admissions! –  is a former federal health and planning minister elected mayor and governor of São Paulo in recent years.

This information broker told federal police he had been paid BRL 12.000 by a journalist from the Estado de Minas in return for presenting the forged papers in order to steal  the data.

The campaign has attempted to lay the episode at the feet of the opposing campaign, but the journalist himself said he undertook the project on behalf of a partisan rival for the presidential nomination, as a defensive measure against a parallel scheme mounted by  Serra supporter, a former federal policeman turned congressional deputy for Rio de Janeiro.

The rival, Minas governor Aécio Neves, denies knowledge of any such initiative.

The journalist was on a leave of absence from the paper while performing this investigation, but now its rival suggests it is lying when it claims it did not support the project financially.

At no time during the entire incident has anyone even remotely suggested that Veronica’s tax returns were in any way suspect, that I know of, by the way.

There was an actually an interesting incident in the papers from around the time of Daddy’s inauguration as governor that suggests a conscientious avoidance of such things: Veronica reportedly quit a job or divested an asset to avoid a potential conflict of interest, I forget.

It is good to see the free and open marketplace of ideas functioning properly..

The Estado de Minas newspaper paid the airfare of journalist Amaury Ribeiro Jr., who hires someone to violate the financial privacy of opposition figures. In a statement to the federal police, the journalist said he officially stopped working at the paper on 16 October, after taking 30 days of vacation time. The data theft occurred between 29 September and 8 October. The airfares were sold to the newspaper by the travel agency Primus, the paper’s regular supplier.

According to the federal police case file, a statement by the travel agency confirms that the EDM only paid travel expenses for Amaury through July of last year. Starting in September, the travel vouchers, including those issued during the period the data was stolen, were billed in the name of Marcelo Augusto de Oliveira, an ESM employee who still works at the paper. Eighteen airline tickets were issued for Amaury’s use in this employee’s name, the last dated 22 December 2009.

I note such cases (a) to embarrass sleazy local journalists who insult my intelligence, in Portuguese, and (b) to mine for airport-newsstand paperback thriller plots.

The Ballad of the Unidentified Sambodian Flying Object, Continued

Was candidate José Serra whacked on the noggin with an unidentified flying object hurled by a supporter of his political opponent during a campaign event in Campo Grande, Rio de Janeiro earlier this week?

Maybe.

Was the incident transformed into a piece of crude political agitprop by the Globo TV network? Yes.

The contention that he was has been used to paint characterize political opponents as “fascist thugs,” a theme heavily amplified by political advertising in this, the final week of the national runoff campaign.

The response of the opposing camp has been to liken the incident to an infamous penalty kick awarded to Chile after phony histrionics by its goalie.

The SBT network aired a report suggesting the candidate had been struck on the head by a wad of paper, then exaggerated the incident. See

• “Facing Down The Fascist Horde”: Factoid of the Sambodian Year

Now, the Globo primetime evening newscast begs to differ, citing cellphone video taken by a Folha de S. Paulo reporter.

The network used violent clashes between police and protesters in France as its lead-in to the story.  The 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. cable news editions covered the French civil disturbances heavily, with dramatic footage of tear gas and riot police in action.

The infotainment barrage stopped short of playing “Street Fighting Man” over the footage. Given the crudity of its framing of the incident, I see no reason why it should not have gone whole-hog and used the song.

Precedents

The case is reminiscent of the electric typewriter scandal that overthrew Dan Rather of CBS News in 2004 after a 60 Minutes report on the military service of George W. Bush.

Amateur sleuths organized by the Powerline blog, run by scholars at the neoconservative Claremont Institute, endlessly debated whether a document presented in the report could have been produced by a 1970s-era IBM electric typewriter.

The issue hinged on whether machines of that period could have produced the automated superscripting of the ordinal numbers, such as “5th” and “6th.”

The report, which otherwise provided solid circumstantial evidence that Bush used his father’s influence to avoid combat duty in Vietnam, was thereby discredited.

The “magic bullet” of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination also comes to mind.

Update, 22 October: A reporter for a rival network who refers to himself as the “Brazilian Huffington” is now suggesting the Globo footage showing a roll of tape striking the candidate was digitally altered.

He presents with a frame-by-frame deconstruction of the footage aired by Globo. TMI alert! Illustrative of the Globo Standard of Quality, however.

I translate for the record.

Images captured by the Folha show the PSDB candidate, José Serra, being struck by a circular, transparent object during the walking tour of Campo Grande on Wednesday.

The images were examined by expert Ricardo Molina at the request of TV Globo and aired on Thursday evening on the Jornal Nacional primetime newscast.

Molina also examined the images recorded by SBT, in which Serra is struck by an object that appears to be a wad of paper. He concluded they were two different moments.

The SBT video clip is being used to accuse Serra of exaggeration in his reaction to the episode.

The images released by the Folha, recorded with the cellphone camera of reporter Italo Nogueira, who was accompanying the event, show the candidate putting his hands to his head seconds after entering the van on the run.

The candidate arrived at about 1 p.m. at the main promenade of Campo Grande. In an event that was peaceful at first, he greeted voters. During the walk, he decided to enter a store to speak with shoppers.

At that moment, two trade unionists showed up near the store with picket signs criticizing the candidate’s mandate as federal health minister.

According to my personal political focus group of one — my wife, a PT voter with Green leanings — his stint in Health was Serra’s one moment of stellar public service. He played an important role in providing affordable, universal AIDS treatment, and has legitimately played up that accomplishment in his campaign.

PSDB supporters tore down the signs, initiating the first physical aggression. Campaign organizers of the PT joined the anti-Serra duo, generalizing the conflict on the promenade, which involved nearly 100 persons.

Upon leaving the store, the candidate became the target of the protests. PT supporters tried to approach him but were pushed back by PSDB campaign organizers. At this moment, the SBT campaign captured the candidate being struck by a wad of paper.