An Illustrated Census of Brazilian «Dirty Blogs»

Above, the blogosphere shreds the mainstream media. The Meme Pollution Meme An interesting sidelight to Brazil’s ongoing «bicho» scandal — Al Capone-level numbers racketeers corrupting politicians, police and journalists — has been the accusations of undue influence by a semi-organized faction of self-described «progressive» digital samizdat artists, known to their vociferous opponents as the Dirty [...]

Anxieties of Influence | Some Key Brazilian Bloggers

As a wannabe beat reporter trying to get oriented in a strange land, my raison du blog is to identify influential media strategists and strategies and reverse engineer their techniques and implementations. In some cases, the structure of hyperlinks in a galaxy of related content provides evidence of a Collaborative Networked Organization (CNO) in action, [...]

Mutatis, Mutantes | Is Civita The Tropical Murdoch?

Civita is our homegrown Murdoch: The Observatório da Imprensa (Brazil) reprints this editorial response from CartaCapital magazine. The little newsweekly that could — brainchild of Veja founder Mino Carta and like-minded friends —  deconstructs a recent O Globo editorial alleging that the argument «Roberto Civita is our homegrown Murdoch» fails to mutante the mutatis properly, and allegedly stems from [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Veja, The Senator & My Belief in Nassif

In Brasilianas, journalist Luis Nassif fires another quixotic broadside at his target of choice, Veja magazine — one of Brazil’s premiere newsweeklies, in circulation if not in epistemological lucidity. He does so despite the remarkable volume of SLAPP suits he has endured for doing so. From time to time, I have done Nassif the small favor [...]

Demóstenes Torres and the Leaky Police

 «The lawmaker and the outlaw law breaker».Photo montage: SBT network From the Terra news portal, further developments in the decline and fall of Senator Demóstenes Torres, this time published first in Globo’s Época weekly newsmagazine. Senator Demóstenes Torres allegedly requested the assistance of racketeer Carlinhos Cachoeira in procuring World Cup contracts for a friend’s public relations firm in [...]

Reporters Sans Limites?

Reporters Without Borders denies reports that it was “excluded” from UNESCO during this UN body’s most recent executive council session for a supposed “lack of ethics.” False reports to this effect have been circulated by certain media, especially in Latin America, without any attempt at verification. Rogério  Christofoletti of objEthos, writing in the Observatório da Imprensa, is [...]

Civita Dei | Notes on The Brazilian Education Lobby

Brasil Escola – an educational publication of Brazil’s Record media group — observes, correctly, a major source of difficulty in trying to cover, in any comprehensive way, the actions of corporate, private and third-sector lobbies, and combinations thereof. The trouble is that the lobbying industry here is just about as unregulated as Liberty Valence. I translate: [...]