TV PSDB? | The Padre Anchieta PPP

They might be better off I think.
The way it seems to me
Making up their own shows,
Which might be better than TV …
–Talking Heads

Recent developments at São Paulo’s PBS quasi-equivalent, TV Cultura, continues to draw flack from the Ford Foundation-funded Observatório da Imprensa and other local observers.

As Wikipedia notes, and I translate

The adminstrative council of the Padre Anchieta Foundation comprises 47 members. The appointment of life-time and elected members are, in large part, influenced by the São Paulo state government.  The state’s role in the foundation’s decision-making process — said to violate its founding principles – has led to criticism by media analysts.

This is true: elected and appointed city and state officials share the dais with tenured professors at state-run universities, which do themselves no favors by playing along. I cannot bear to watch it, although I used to enjoy Roda Viva.

The naked truth is that the ruling PSDB has followed in the footsteps of its ideological twin in Mexico, the PAN: founded as a moralizing antidote to the machine politics of the PMDB and PFL — the PRI, in PAN’s case — it has slipped the very leash it sought to place on public immorality.

Heading this partial llist, Goldman and Matarazzo are one of the PSDB’s federal senators and the power behind the throne of São Paulo’s municipal government, respectively. Is he one of those Matarazzos? Yes, he is: a scion of the coffee barons, a sort of tropical Lorenzo de Medici.

Added to the mix most recently is commercially produced programming by the Folha de S. Paulo and the Editora Abril, both of them credibly — they are incredibly guilty, really — denounced as part of the political machine.

I find that a preliminary «link ecology» of TV Cultura’s Web presence neatly confirms this diagnosis. I have pruned the network of most redundant «social code» — Twitter, Facebook and other echo chambers …

Hacks x Flacks: Globo and the GIGO Fallacy Fallacy

The Fundamental Attribution Error is to explain one’s own behavior and opinions as rational reactions to external circumstances and to the available data, while attributing the behavior and opinions of others to their emotional state and psychological biases. – SkepticWiki

Comunique-se, a trade mag for the Brazilian journalism and PR rackets — under Brazil’s odd industrial classification scheme, the two are considered one and the same racket — reports.

A few years ago, the presiding magistrate of the Labor Tribunal of São Paulo — where my late father-in-law used to practice — was found guilty of involvement in a scheme to inflate the costs of putting up a fancy new building for the court, then skim money off the top.

The federal court hearing the case issued a press release at the time the judge and accomplices were arrested and charged.

The Globo nework’s version of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, the Jornal Nacional, got the story wrong.

In a follow-up, the JN — its Dan Rather is a guy whose name is pronounced “boner” — attributed its own error to the press release prepared by the federal court’s PR guy.

The flack sued Globo, and won, pointing out that all the other news organizations that received the release managed to Ctl-C, Ctl-V the facts accurately.

Technically, this is a case of the “fallacy fallacy” — fallaciously attributing fallacy or error to another.

Here, the fallacy falsely attributed is the GIGO — “garbage in, garbage out” — fallacy.

A news organization evoking the GIGO fallacy is problematic in the first place, however — as the judge in the libel case points out.

It would seem to imply that the reproduction of facts stated in press releases, with no independent corroboration, constitutes the practice of journalism.

Personally, I prefer to read the original press release on PR Newswire. After all, some very talented and high-paid English majors worked hard to write these things, and write them well. I have written some myself.

And unfortunately, sometimes journalists do garble them in translation — which is why they call us “hacks.” Talk slow and use short words. I majored in journalism.

Na ocasião, a Globo noticiou, no Jornal Nacional, que além do ex-juiz Nicolau do Santos Neto, condenado por desvio da verba destinada à construção da sede do Tribunal Regional do Trabalho em São Paulo, e de Monteiro de Barros e José Eduardo Corrêa Teixeira Ferraz, a mulher de Nicolau, Maria da Glória Beirão dos Santos, também estaria envolvida no esquema e que sua prisão teria sido decretada. Após perceber o erro e ser informada do equívoco, a emissora atribuiu a “barriga” ao então assessor de imprensa da Justiça Federal de São Paulo, no noticiário do dia seguinte.

At the time, the JN reported that in addition to the the ex-judge, later convicted along with two others of embezzling money destined for the construction of the court building, the judge’s wife was also involved in the scheme and that a warrant had been issued for her arrest. After perceiving the error and being informed of the mistake, Globo attributed the error to the public relations director of the São Paulo federal courts in a report aired the following day.

“The Chattering Classes”

THE FALL OF WALL STREET IS THE BERLIN WALL OF SAVAGE CAPITALISM: The historical analogy dominates CartaCapital magazine this week. I am not sure I agree with the analysis -- Hegel famously said he thought human beings incapable of learning from history, and may have been correct. But it certainly is a dominant South American meme at the moment.

Brazilian political and economic commentators perform their analyses before the fact. Before they know that it actually happened, they have an explanation for it. They present opinion divorced from information. –Ricardo Kauffman

From the unsigned Têvêlândia (“Televisionland”) column in CartaCapital (São Paulo, Brazil) No. 518 (R$7.90 at your local newsstand.) My loose translation.

They were so sure of themselves, the poor bastards, with their prophetic self-confidence. They knew all there was to know about the current situation and about the future as well. They preached fiscal discipline and criticized public spending. They said things like: Brazil ought to sit up and take notice. Globalization is irreversible. We cannot turn our backs on the world. The Lula government will not give the international financial community the benefit of the doubt. The State represents oppression. Long live the free market.

With their bow-ties, their tousled haircuts, their cheeks swollen with platitudes, all very much in the style of the Chicago Boys (and Girls), they gabbled absurdities and prophesied catastrophes. They had the certainty of fools and never failed to provide the needed partisan-political spin. If you were, for example, married to some pompous scholar who does yeoman service for the PSDB, you were obliged to say, whenever something went right in the administration of your ideological adversary, that it was not your adversary who deserved the credit, but the previous administration, which “planted the seeds of the future.”