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Why Brazilians Oddly Blame The Globo Media Empire For The Country's Misfortunes

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Protesters throw rocks at Rede Globo's offices in Rio (Photo by Daniel Ramalho/Terra)

Thousands of Brazilians have poured onto the streets in the past few weeks to vent their anger at government corruption and poor public services. In spite of the protests being initially sparked by a rise in public transport prices in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, they quickly mushroomed into much broader discontent, including a growing distaste of Brazil’s largest media empire,Organizações Globo, especially its behemoth broadcaster, Rede Globo, by far the country’s most-watched.

Such sentiment has caused a curious uproar: although the ratings certainly prove that Brazilians love to tune in on Globo, the reaction on the streets to its allegedly biased editorial content also show that they love to hate Globo. It is even more surprising that instead of going after the companies that are directly connected to their requests for better public services and infrastructure, the protesters chose Rede Globo to take the heat for all the bad things happening in Brazil right now.

But does that make sense? Apparently not, and here’s why.

As a consequence of the size of its viewership, Rede Globo is in a position to exert significant influence on the outcome of national politics. An example of that is an episode that took place during the 1989 presidential election, when the network aired the final debate between Fernando Collor de Mello and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, showing excerpts of it on its news shows afterwards and giving Collor considerably more air time than Lula, juxtaposing some of Collor’s best moments during the debate with some of Lula’s worst, and therefore helping Collor win the presidency that year.

Rede Globo only recently publicly apologized for the incident, even though it never really admitted to having purposely helped Collor. The acknowledgement of the presidential debate faux pas didn’t stop the network from being routinely accused of benefiting certain bipartisan special interest groups and persons more than others.

Blaming alleged media bias for their troubles when scandals arise is a common thing among politicians, especially those in power. But for the people to rise against media organizations in the way that some Brazilians are doing with Rede Globo is something more unusual.

Sure Americans love to hate Fox News too, and other large media organizations have been targeted by protesters during the “Occupy” anti-capitalist movements, but in Brazil things went a bit awry, with protesters invading Rede Globo’s headquarters [VIDEO] a few weeks ago, and destroying its Leblon offices in Rio de Janeiro.

The anti-Globo sentiment on the streets is so high that the network’s reporters who cover the protests have to work under strict security, sometimes even using microphones without the Globo logo in them. But according to a corporate communication spokesperson at Rede Globo, this is not something exclusively against the network. “Not only in Brazil but in other parts of the world where there have been street protests against the status quo the target of the protesters are large companies, large conglomerates, and traditional institutions,” the spokesperson told FORBES.

One of the protesters’ arguments is that Rede Globo has been complicit in negotiating with whoever is in power as a way to remain in power itself and defend its interests by all means, a claim they deny. “Rede Globo is completely independent of political parties, business groups, as established in our editorial principles,” the spokesperson said.

Organizações Globo is Brazil’s and Latin America’s largest media conglomerate, with revenues of $6.8 billion last year. Their owners, billionaire brothers Roberto Irineu Marinho, João Roberto Marinho and José Roberto Marinho are worth a combined $26 billion, as of FORBES’ last Billionaires list, which makes them Brazil’s richest family. They are to Brazil what the Kochs and Waltons are to America, except they neither pollute the environment nor pay miserable wages. Still, to some of their opponents, the Marinho brothers are the source of all that is questionable, disagreeable and evil in Brazilian society.

But above all things they are also big players of the free market agenda, controlling a multi-billion dollar business that employs tens of thousands in Brazil, a country whose press is outspoken and vibrant, as befits a truly free and open society. Obviously, Organizações Globo and especially Rede Globo have made mistakes along the way, but as horrible as the media can be, they are not the problem. At least not on this case, and certainly not in Brazil.

“Rede Globo’s news programs are properly covering the manifestations in Brazil. We are listening to both the organizers of such manifestations as well as authorities, and we do it independently. In some cases, we have denounced arbitrary arrests of those who are on the streets protesting. It is our duty to check if what officials and protesters say is true. We do journalism, nothing more than that,” the spokesperson said.

Activists who complain about the nature of media coverage are demanding that the media abandon its self-described objective journalistic stance and champion their cause by reporting what they want reported. That’s what theindependent group known as Ninja Media is doing in Brazil. The group rose to prominence during the first mass protests in São Paulo, and was started by Bruno Torturra, a former writer in Rede Globo.

Based on independent reporting on social network websites, Ninja Media isattracting some attention in a country that has long been dominated by mainstream giants. Its online viewership is still considerably smaller than any major network but the upstart has contributed to shifting public opinion toward seeing the protests as the work of small groups of vandals rather than peaceful groups.

“When defending their views, these protesters who use social networks tend to republish articles that were produced by the professional press, which came out on TV (mostly in Rede Globo), on radio, in newspapers, in magazines, and on the internet news sites. This is further proof that the [Brazilian] press fulfills its role. On the other hand, the authorities always find space in the press to explain themselves. And it is a duty of the press to give space for them to do so. This is how it works anywhere in the world where there is a free and responsible press,” the spokesperson said.

It’s also worth noting that the most critical political talk-show currently on air in Brazil, “Meninas do Jô” (“Jo’s Girls”) is produced and aired by Rede Globo. A spin-off of the popular talk-show “Programa do Jô,” the weekly late-night series is hosted by TV legend Jô Soares along with four female journalists — Lilian Witte Fibe, Cristina Serra, Ana Maria Tahan and Cristiane Lôbo — all of whom are not shy about expressing their opinions toward society and politics no matter whose interests are involved, even those of Organizações Globo.

Particularly popular among young audiences, the show has never been threatened with being pulled off-air simply because it’s a success. And that is, after all, what Rede Globo and most other commercial broadcasters are all about anyway: entertaining their audiences and keeping their attention, not alienating them.

Blaming the media reinforces tendencies toward conspiratorial thinking. It crowds out creative thinking about how to make use of the media as part of strategic non-violent campaigns. Today the internet is thought to be a place of freedom, and the main culprit is said to be television, with its allegedly misleading or distracting images, and non-stop advertising, but the complaint goes back to the days when there were only newspapers. It leads to endless dissection of every media story to find any mistakes and distortions, but progressives rarely consider the possibility that the media distortions are not the reason why they often lose.

It’s also a very leftist view, based on the premise that ownership and control of the media are highly concentrated and growing more so all the time, a model based on advertising revenue, which makes them sensitive to the concerns of big corporate advertisers. In general, media control is not a principle that is aligned with sophisticated economies.

As for Brazilians’ thirst for blaming Rede Globo for their problems, that is a lazy and tired trope. Their right and, most of all, their choice to go to the streets to request a better country for themselves isn’t. But this time around, they chose the wrong villain.

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