The Fearless Independence of the Editora Abril and Other Tall Tales of Its Kind

Blog da Cidadania‘s Edu Guimarães is a leading figure in the self-styled «progessive blogsphere» here in Brazil.  He writes,

Some days ago, a friend of mine employed by the Editora Abril phoned me to describe his worries over the scandal involving the newsweekly Veja — that is to say, involving the possibility that group publisher Roberto Civita will be subpoenaed to appear before the parliamentary inquiry into the Charlie Waterfall case.

Wiretaps of the numbers racketeer captured the racketeers boasting of their success in planting scandalous cover stories with the magazine to undermine their political enemies and competition.

This friend’s concern was that condemnation of the company will produce blowback affecting the thousands of Abril employees. My response was that my friend should not worry himself, given the likelihood that Civita will succeed in hushing up the case, but also given that the damage will be confined to Veja and not affect the division where my friend works.

We also have friends at Abril and can testify that the vast majority of its knowledge workers are talented and conscientious.

My friend, still worried, said he takes no comfort from this scenario because what is keeping Abril in business nowadays is Veja and its contracts with the state government of S. Paulo, which burns massive amounts of cash from its education budget to buy tens of thousands of copies of Veja and textbooks published by Abril, along with others purchased from the Folha, Estado and Globo groups.

Somewhere here I have informal financials of the Abril group from 2007, at which time it was in the market for private equity partnership. Other than that, however, the company profile is that of a hereditary media robber baronage.

I remembered this conversation when I read the accusations that Veja columnist and blogger Reinaldo Azevedo and other mainstream media figures publish every day against members of a blogosphere opposed to the synergies pursued by the major media and the PSDB, DEM and PPS political parties.

Ecuador | The Fundamedios Report in Context

New and noted:

• Ecuador | Attacks on press have grown 150% in recent years | Observatório da Imprensa (Brazil)

A NED-sponsored press freedom campaign, Fundamedios, raises Cain over the SLAPP suit brought against El Universo by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

The results of the survey show that attacks on journalists and media organizations grew 150% in the last four years. In the first quarter of 2009 there were 21 cases of aggression. In 2010, that number jumped to 34, and to 42 in 2011. These figures reflect in great part constant attacks on the press inspired by President Correa, according to Fundamedios, despite the presidential pardon of journalists Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, authors of Big Brother and respondents in a libel suit againt the daily El Universo. The case against Calderón and Zurita continues: the court ruled in late March not to accept the presidential pardon. The information is from Liliana Honorato of the Knight Center blog Journalism in the Americas [April 16, 2012].

IFEX, an international freedom of speech organization with heavy ties to K Street’s democracy export industry, reports that Correa has called his adversaries at El Universo «liars». The defendants, meanwhile, have assembled an impressive slate of amicus curiae commentators on the case, including an opinion from Harvard Law.

Under the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Palacio would enjoy clear First Amendment rights protecting him from either criminal or civil liability in the action brought against him by Mr. Correa.

Leaving aside the ifs ands and buts of the case — as a true-blue nephew of my Uncle Sam, how could I not be alarmed by this SLAPP at our First Amendment? — I still believe that the Bolivarian rhetoric of Correa feeds on the appearance of foreign meddling dating back to the days of United Fruit.

Any undergraduate will immediately suspect, for example, that stating the trend in terms of percentages tends to mask what might seem a fairly modest absolute number of «attacks». «Attacks» is not defined very precisely to differentiate between physical or practical violence and rhetorical cannonades accompanied by a real risk to operations.

Above, the network neighborhood of the hot site for Correa v. El Universo.

It consists of several global newspapers, participants in the World Association of Newspapers, a body whose founding members are principals in Innovation Media Consulting, in concert with such major publishing groups as PRISA and the Latin American AP, GDA, whose membership share a distinctive style of graphical and news design.

Intersecting with this content flow are streams tracing back to USAID, CIMA.NED and related media development programs of the U.S. government, as well as quite a few public-private partrnerships, none of them very plausibly deniable.

For this reason, the perceptions invoked by Correa — call it the «Phantom Banana Republican» meme —  are a difficult legacy to live down.

Correa has learned from Chávez — the phantom carcinogenic CIA plot! — that inciting moral panic over foreign influence sells electoral soap.

The Anglo-European democracy export industry is feeding, not depriving, such moments — moments of perceived vulnerability to cultural invasion — of the oxygen they need to propagate.

In this case, it is important to realize that the shift in funding of the Fundamedios project over the last few years is notable, and readily exploitable by the rhetoricians of nationalism.

The Tupi Tabloid, Decline and Waterfall

Bicho de sete cabeças: Racketeer «Captain» Guimarães (left) with Rio mayor Cesar «The Naked» Maia (second from left), Carnval 2007.

A steady drip of confidential criminal intel maintains the diversified gambling racketeer Carlinhos Cachoeira — «Charlie Waterfall» — at the top of the Brazilian newshour, 24-7.

The vigorous Rashomon effect observed seems to flow in good part from an upstart regional press seeking local angles on a national story — and more power to them, I always say. But awareness of potential axes to be ground is recommended

When R7 (Record) reports on alleged crooked dealings involving this year’s Carnaval celebrations, for example, you do well to remember that its archrival, Globo, enjoys exclusive broadcast rights to the event thanks to its relationship with LIESA, the league of Rio de Janeiro samba societies.

How independent can the Liga Independente be, however, if it lives at LIESA.GLOBO.COM? See my earlier notes,

• Black Friday for Fat Tuesday, SA?
• Rio Carnaval: Riotur, LIESA Contracts Probed

Curious, therefore, how rarely one hears questions about the broadcast and print behemoth’s ties to what back home would be called a RICO — Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization.

In the Charlie Waterfall case, meanwhile, similar concerns about abuses by media oligopolies have been bubbling up from the «progressive blogosphere» about Abril’s Veja magazine.

Recordings of the racketeer conversing with minions claim that Charlie Waterfall used agents with intelligence and police backgrounds to stage scandals and place journalistic content with the magazine, including numerous bombastic cover stories.

Example: the bribery scandal in the postal service that led to the “big monthly allowance” scandal.

I translate a selection:

In the current case, Cachoeira makes this claim during a call with someone known only as Santana — possibly an alderman from Goiânia — on March 9, 2011 at 6:29 p.m., minutes after Beija-Flor was crowned the winner of the Rio de Janeiro Carnaval celebration.

The police report does not include a word-by-word transcript, but summarizes as follows: «They talked about Beija-Flor’s victory. Carlos had some sort of business with the club, and confirms there had been manipulation of the result,» according to the report.

At the time, the victory of Beija-Flor, which celebrated the career of singer Roberto Carlos in its allegory, was vigorously questioned by samba society directors and Internet users.  The hashtag #marmelada became one of the most commented on Twitter.

R7 contacted Beijar-Flor to ask wheter the charges were accurate. Beija-Flor public relations officer  Hilton Abi Rihan denied any untoward dealings and said that no one at the school knows Charlie Waterfall.

Yes, but Beija-Flor has been supported financially over the years by fellow racketeer Anísio Abraão David — Anśio da Beija-Flor. Anísio was charged in 2007 to threatening Carnaval jurors with death, but never prosecuted.

Gunned Down in Maranhão

iG  — Brazil –reports: After a journalist is assassinated death squad-style with a standard-issue police weapon, other journalists report receiving threats of violence.

The death of journalist Décio Sá, a political reporter at the Sarney political clan’s Estado do Maranhão and author of the widest read blog in the state, has led to a state of panic among journalists there, exposing systematic troubles once deemed isolated occurences. Threats to freedom of the press in the state are much more common than thought.

In the last three years alone, a number of journalists and publications suffered censorship or pressures in the attempt to limit press freedom. In 2010, reporter Itevaldo Júnior, political editor of “O Estado” and author of a blog covering the state judiciary,was forbidden from mentioning the name of judge Nemias Nunes Carvalho after an accusation surfaced according to which the judge bought a farm from a fugitive from justice who had benefited from the judge’s ruling in his case. A year before that,  another court ruling obliged O Jornal Pequeno, an anti-Sarney publication, to remove a report on Operation Faktor that cited the name of Fernando Sarney.

Last year, reporter Carla Lima, of the Estado do Maranhão was assaulted by the security guards of the mayor of São Luís, João Castelo (PSDB). The Estado takes an oppositionist stance toward the adminstration there.

So-called «bloggers» are among the most commonly threatened. Some have received anonymous calls and messages threatening them with death over notes posted to their sites. Blogger  Caio Hostílio is currently battling 86 law suits brought by politicians and public officials targeted for criticism by the blog. He was the foremost critic of the state military police strike last year.“With the death of Décio, we realize that death threats can turn all too real”, Hostílio says.

Reporter Marco Aurélio D’Eça, police reporter at the Estado, has also been a frequent target of threats. A defendant in six law suits, D’Eça says that the death of Décio has obliged all journalists to review their work habits and daily routines. “I am not feeling too secure. When a motorcycle approaches my car, I am afraid something is going to happen,” he says.“If they can kill Décio, a right-hand man of Sarney’s, what will they do with the small fry?”said another political blogger, Marcelo Vieira.

After the death of Décio Sá, at least two other journalists have been threatened with death.Neto Ferreira received a message from an Internet user mere hours after the murder. The two cases have been denounced by state public safety secretary Aluísio Mendes. Prior to the assassination of Sá, Mendes already had information on threats to other journalists of Maranhão.

Regarding the federal police Operation Faktor,

Operation Faktor, previously known as Boi Barrica, is investigating Fernando Sarney, for suspicion of irregular campaign finance practices for the gubernatorial candidacy of Roseana Sarney in Maranhão in 2006. Before the elections, he is suspected of having  raise BRL 2 million in cash. The term «Boi Barrica» refers to a legendary folklore troupe sponsored by the Sarney family. The operation had to be renamed after the musical group Boizinho Barrica complained.

Fernando Sarney was indicted for criminal conspiracy, financial mismanagement, money laundering and fraud. He denies all the charges.

As part of the operation, federal police recorded calls indicating the practice of nepotism by José  Sarney when he intervened to hire his grandson’s girlfriend. …

In 2011 justices of the Superior Tribunal de Justiça  threw out the evidence presented, judging it to have been obtained illegally. As a result, the case is practically starting over from square one.

On The Antonin Scalia School of Tropical Jurisprudence

R7 reports on a jaw-dropping moment of political incorrectness,. The story runs above the fold  the front page of the Folha de S. Paulo and other dailies this morning, but the racial overtones are deemphasized.

I translate the gist.

An interview by Consultor Jurídico with former chief justice Cezar Peluso served as a pretext for Minister Joaquim Barbosa to say what he thinks of his colleague. Peluso had called Barbosa «insecure» and said he had a difficult temper. In the interview, Peluso acknowledged Barbosa’s qualities but lamented his posture. “The impression I have is that he fears being seen as arrogant. He is leery of being viewed as someone who joined the Court not on his own merits but because of his race.”

And here they say that Brazilians are not racists.

And by «they» I mean gabbling culture-industrial gnostics like Ali Kamel of Globo Infotainment Central.

Barbosa shot back during an interview with Carolina Brígido of O Globo on Friday. Barbosa said Peluso has left no legacy during his term as president of the court. “People will remember his as a conservative, imperious, tyrannical jurist who violated legal norms left and right when he wanted to impose his will. “

Barbosa is in line to serve a term as Chief Justice — the  justices rotate on a fixed schedule — in the fourth quarter 2012. This is hardly the first time he has quarreled openly with colleagues.

Higher Education | USP and the TFP?

When Rodas was still a candidate for the office, in 2009, the Estado de S. Paulo grilled him on rumors that he maintained ties with the far-right groups Opus Dei and Tradtion, Family and Property.

Carta Capital runs a profile of the University of S. Paulo’s combative rector, Grandino Rodas – a second-place candidate for the office who was nevertheless appointed by Governor Serra.

I mean to incorporate related notes on (1) the difficulties to «brain-sharing» posed by a dysfunctional Brazilian academic culture; the scientific diplomacy of the Dilma government; and, incongruously but honest to God, a recent, modest but unsettling, resurgence of Tradition, Family and Property.

A chronicle  by Cynara Menezes on a recent TFP gathering at S. Paulo’s wonderful Trianon park — my favortie place to smoke a cigar while reading the paper — shows that Brazilian TFPs are also fond of bagpipes.

On USP:

Imagine a place with some 110,000 inhabitants and nearly 5 million square meters, completely enclosed and led by an admistrator who makes decisions without consulting a soul, resorts to police repression and banishment of dissidents, and employs spies to inform him of the activities of opponents.

Attacks on tenure and McCarthyite ideological purity tests.

Corruption | Waterfall in Nextel Hell

Today, via Vlad, a newkey man in one of my endless siftings through egocentric networks in Portuguese.

It is not for nothing that the Brazilian press picked up on the compliment paid last week to Brazil’s President Dilma by her fellow iron lady, Hillary Clinton.

As a major political scandal shifts to high gear in the next few weeks, there will almost certainly be ocassion to recall the following words:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that Dilma Rousseff is establishing a “world-class standard” in the battle for transparency and against corruption.

I agree with the good wife Hillary, who is not always so politic. The Brazilian federal police, despite internecine strife pitting an element of the old guard against young, ambitious and often morally hysterical investigators like Protogenes Queiroz, has an impressive track record, and the demilitarization of public safety is an important ongoing labor.

It actually deserved the advertorial flattery it received from all three major newsweeklies a couple of years back — headlined «the untouchables», naturally.

I make http://www.dpf.gov.br/agencia-de-noticias a regular read.

As I was semi-joking with my wife, meanwhile, the parliamentary commission of inquiry — CPI — into the complex dealings of bingo and video poker racketeer «Charley Waterfall» present a fascinating technology case study:

Many of the wiretaps in the case apparently targeted Nextel radio sets activated in Miami and supposed by their users to be immune to wireless surveillance.

In its current ad campaign, Nextel creates a lovely scenario around singer Milton Nascimento as he walks the night-time streets of Ouro Preto. The beep-boop of the radio channel blends into his soulful a capella. Lovely. — creative but also incorporating a real-life feature of the gizmo. So many ads these days bombard your brain with fabulous imagery but leave you asking yourself, «what was that ad an ad for?»

Anyway, as I told the Mrs., I maintain a standing Google News Alert on such terms as «glitch», «malfunction» and «snafu» in order to shore up a pet peeve of mine: Technology journalism is too often overwhelmed by the «rhetoric of the technological sublime».

Consider the beatification of the late Steve Jobs. But in any case, no publicity is bad publicity. Along similar lines, there has been interest in The Mafia Manager, the most recent pop management theory out to corner the market on PowerPoint infographics.

Someone here made the same connection, without reference to the book — the conceit is an obvious one after all.  Yes, Cachoeira & Cia. in Nextel Hell displayed many, many textbook cases of management techniques for the networked enterprise.

Vlad writes, and I translate:

As Falls Waterfall, So Falls Waterfall Recall

.

In the face of wiretap transcriptions implying that Veja magazine served as a conduit for the dissemination of targeted slander campaigns by a hegemonic gambling racket in Goiás, the newsweekly digs up the nearly decade-old scandal of the “big monthly allowance” on its most recent cover, above.

The chatter on this topic is highly confusing — which, as some observers point out, is likely the whole point of this way Brazilian, textbook exercise in shrieking «moral panic».

With another bicameral parliamentary commission of inquiry — CPI — on the agenda of the Congress, it seems not unlikely that lawmakers will not get any legislating done as they swim against the tide of scandalous revelations of another «CPI of the End of the World.»

I believe this is the source of the federal president’s reported opposition to the CPI: «Let the police and courts do their jobs and go pass my gosh-damned amended forestry code and World Cup enabling bill!» Brazil needs to evolve a Move On movement of its own.

It was embarrassing, for instance, to see the World Cup legislation held up over lobbying against a proposed ban on beer at the games in the interest of public safety. A beer manufacturer and the Souza Cruz tobacco firm contributing to the making of a biopic on ex-president Lula in which the rough-hewn former labor leader is constantly smoking and downing brewskies. Embarassingly crude merchandising, I thought

As to the rest of it, my personal axe to grind with Abril are its flagrant abuses of its print distribution monopoly in S. Paulo state. There must thousands of newsstands over which the publisher exercises extensive if sneaky and underhanded monopoly power. I have seen plenty of these bancas where no competing magazines are sold.  This I have witnessed at a fair selection of roadside bancas in what passes for «upstate» here in Sambodia.

Abril is one of those anachronistic oligopolies that the Google guys get press for saying they are trying not to be as evil as.

«Crime Overwhelms Goiás» -- Newly uncovered police report describes how Waterfall manipulated Senator Torres and the governor of Goiás, Cerrillo»

Facebook friend Leandro Fortes of CartaCapital magazine — which saw a recent edition bought up by persons in unmarked vehicles who sought to prevent the circulation of Leandro’s cover story  – has been one of several indy and quasi-indy conduits for the accusations against Veja magzine.

I downloaded the available files and managed to confirm the validity of the passages cited. These are the tropics: Boil before consuming.

" ... Journalism? Veja magazine and the racketeer Charley Waterfall ..."

An anonymous source passed transcripts to the «progressive» bloggers and media in which the central figure in the scandal — the bingo racketeer Charlie Waterfall — boasted of feeding the magazine scandals off the record and on the deep “down low” and “hush hush” — including the 2005 post office bribery scandal that mushroomed into the delirious mess of the “big monthly allowance” scandal, set for final ajudication somethine this year.

Leandro writes, 

Demise of Demóstenes | Amateurs Get the Dropbox on MSM

A reasonably thorough scanning of Brazil’s «progressive blogophere» turns up a Wikileaks moment: Lei dos Homens offers the entire federal police and prosecutorial case file on the corruption case that has led the political opposition into yet another ugly crisis .

Dropbox, however, is informing me that the customer account is receiving too much traffic and cannot be accessed, above.

There appears to be enough material to keep nosy investigators busy for months, if not more. I personally would like to know more about the alleged collusion of journalists with the gambling rackets of Goiás.

Post-scriptum: An anonymous user has posted the 36-volume case file on Scribd.

Above, Nextel confirms the interception of user accounts pursuant to a court order.

If I ever realize my dreams of producing at least one hardboiled fiction in the school of Rubem Fonseca, these sorts of files could come in handy.

Torres | «The creature who turned on his creators»

Maria Inês Nassif a columnist for Valor Econômico and the lefty Carta Maior, unleashes her patented brand of uncommon sense on recent revelations in the corruption case against federal senator Demóstenes Torres — a case emblematic of the destruction of power centers on the right hand of the right hand.

Some editorialists have denounced the leaking of a police report to reporters as illegal conduct — «Jornal do Brasil», among others — but most of them have done and do the same thing, in the absence of any enforcement of anti-leaking rules.

For myself, I trust Leandro Fortes, who broke the story in Carta Capital, and Maria Inês, a Facebook friend and colleague of mine, whose blunt account of the scheme bodes ill for corrupt journalistics enterprises. I translate.

The strategy behind this spectacle is as old as journalism itself. A news item is launched in spectacular fashion — a practice Antonio Gramsci identified with the «yellow press»  – and then fed in small doses with insignificant facts that add up to nothing in themselves but which soon constitute a sideshow in their own right. Dramatic characters are selected, oracular powers are attributed to them, and every sentence they speak is treated as damning proof of other people’s crooked dealings. In the final stages of this strategy, stealing a tapioca is treated on a par with fraudently obtaining government contracts. The lie becomes the truth by dint of repetition, and the truth — the truth known only to Demóstenes at this point — is never revealed. From one point of view, in recent years, judging the importance of the facts has become a confusing businees, to say the least. From another, the credibility of any and all accusations has been undermined. The media’s involvement in deconstructing and destroying reputations has been intimate and intense. Demóstenes would not be Demóstenes were it not for the column inches and air time dedicated to his scheming to destroy enemies, favor friends or blackmail governments. The economic and ideological interests of big media made it an accomplice to these aims, bent on publicizing everything but the truth. The fact is that over a careet of eight years in the Senate, Demóstenes developed a solid relationship with the media that, regardless of the presence or absence of profressional ethics on the part of journalists, succeeded in bending Brazil as a whole to the interests of a local mafia in Goias state. The interests of the gambling rackets did their deals through this power structure, and embarked on a whole gamut of deals with governments, legislatures and the judiciary. The passing of laws, changing the rules of competitive bidding, accompanying court proceedings. As big media pursued its own political interest, it made the average viewer or reader a hostage to Demóstenes, the racketeer, and the friends of both in positions of power.

Demóstenes was not unmasked by the media: The investigation into his dealings has been underway for some time now by the Federal Police and the federal prosecutor. In the meantime, the press and media were held hostage to an unknown figure who rose rapidly to a position as spokesman for public morality. He became the creature who turned against his creators.