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THE LIKELY ASCENSION TO THE POWER OF right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro is already creating a climate in which journalists who criticize him or his movement - including journalists reporting to Intercept - are being exposed to an aggressive campaign of personal investigations, attempts of intimidation and pernicious scrutiny of members of our families.
These attacks are being orchestrated by the media owned by the billionaire evangelical pastor and drowned in scandals , Edir Macedo, who is now an explicit defender of Bolsonaro. Macedo's vast media empire - which includes the country's second largest TV station (Record), online portals (R7) and other news agencies - is being used to punish and retaliate journalists for the crime of criticizing Jair Bolsonaro, his movement and the companies of Macedo.
Last Saturday, Intercept issued a complaint about how journalists inside the R7, a huge online portal owned by Macedo, are "hostage" to their agenda, prevented from publishing negative stories about Bolsonaro and completely forced to sacrifice their journalistic integrity in the service of Macedo's extremist political agenda. The article, written by Leandro Demori for Intercept, based on reports from desperate anonymous journalists of the R7, has become one of our most read articles this year. On Thursday, after the report, Luciano Barcellos, the longtime news editor for TV Record's main news program, resigned .
Throughout 2017 and 2018, Intercept has published some of the most aggressive and readiest of Bolsonaro's most critical news reports. Intercept has been reporting critically on Bolsonaro for a long time. In 2014, we published an article calling him "the most misogynistic and hateful elected politician in the democratic world." Late last year, Bolsonaro on Twitter used an epithet for LGBTs to attack me like a fag after I described him as a fascist.
Since our publication of Saturday's report on R7, Macedo's pet dealers - those who once were journalists but were now metamorphosed by force into pro-Bolsonaro warriors - were mobilized to investigate not just journalists of Intercept, but also the families of those who provide Intercept with their journalism. In a few hours, they went after the personal life of Demori's parents in a small town in the interior of Santa Catarina, claiming things that have nothing to do with him and his career, dating back to 1992 when he was only 11 of age. They dug their past to find pictures of him in his early twenties.
They sent e-mails to Intercept with a series of implied accusations, insinuations of fabricated scandals, and misleading statements about my husband's finances - in the e-mail they sent us, they used public information about their assets and their election spending to raising doubts, ignoring other equally public information that could have been accessed in the same places and that dismantled its malicious version.
Less than two days after the publication of our complaint about the use of R7 journalists to pro-Bolsonaro propaganda, the portal published a reckless and full-fledged attack on the journalists involved in the reports published by Intercept, as well as about me and my husband. He alleged, falsely, that:
- I am the "owner" of the site (I am not and never had any corporate participation and no one in my family has, in fact, I am not even the publisher of the site);
- We are a foreign vehicle that exists to interfere in Brazilian politics, attacking Bolsonaro and promoting the interests of my husband's party, the PSOL (articles about Brazil published in Intercept are verified and written mainly by Brazilian journalists who also published numerous articles criticizing all leftist parties - including that of my husband, who was the subject of a scathing criticism in 2016, of my own) ;
- And it did not include any comments from Intercept, which sent a long response to the questions the night before the article was published (two of their comments were added hours after publication).
The fragility of these attacks made the shot backfire. Although the article was widely shared by supporters of the Bolsonaro, the reception was largely negative , with Internet users highlighting the false statements, the incoherent accusations and the childish attempt to throw mud in the hope that something would emerge .
NOW, BUT, THE efforts of Bishop Macedo's media empire are increasingly serious, more intimidating and more sinister. They notified Intercept of their intention to publish what they consider to be a report of great importance to us, to be displayed on one of the most watched programs on the network's broadcaster, the Spectacular Sunday, a kind of generic from Globo's Fantastic. In these sent notifications, it became clear that significant resources were used to investigate not only the past of Intercept journalists, but also of their families.
To substantiate the absurd accusation that Demori is a member of the same party as my husband, PSOL, Bishop Macedo's agents unearthed a photo of more than 10 years that Demori poses with Luciana Genro, the party's leading cadre. The photo was taken after an interview Genro gave him, something reporters should do by definition (I, for example, took pictures with all the candidates I interviewed this year, as well as the former presidents I interviewed in 2016 ).
Editor-in-chief of TIB, Leandro Demori, with Luciana Genro from PSOL, in 2008, after an interview. (photo provided by Record)
Ironically, in the same year, Demori interviewed Onyx Lorenzoni, a conservative figurehead and one of Bolsonaro's right-handers, now quoted to assume a ministry in an eventual PSL government. After the interview, Demori and Lorenzoni took a picture together, which, according to the logic used by Record, means that Demori is nothing more than an extreme right-wing poacher.
The Record's motive for retaliatory revenge is also obvious for its bizarre and sudden interest in the finances of my husband, just a member of the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro, eight days before a national runoff election in which he is not a candidate. This decision to investigate him now is particularly revealing given Record's apparent lack of interest in a major scandal involving the Bolsonaro campaign that drew international attention : allegations that Bolsonaro benefited from illegal corporate money spent on a massive publicity campaign false news via WhatsApp: a story that the R7 buried.
In contrast to what the international media reported incisively, the R7 and, now seemingly also Record, are barely trying to hide the fact that they are not doing journalism, but rather a revenge mission for our critical report on Bolsonaro and his billionaire supporter. As they now investigate the past of the families of Intercept journalists, the front page of the R7 portal on the day of the Folha de S. Paulo report did not mention this huge Bolsonaro scandal:
When the R7 contacted Intercept for the first time for feedback, a long response was sent to their questions. But when we saw that they published an article full of falsehoods - and that did not include the answers or comments we sent in its original version - the editors of Intercept came to the only possible conclusion: what they were doing was not at all journalism, but a campaign of intimidation as punishment for the reports critical of Bolsonaro and Bishop Macedo.
As a result, when Record's TV program requested an interview to explore much broader issues about all of this, Intercept's chief editor Betsy Reed declined to provide further answers, explaining to Record's Costa Costa:
I received your request for an interview. However, instead of talking to you, we will provide only this statement, as the full article of errors posted on the R7 portal has clearly shown that you are not journalists but rather extreme right-wing parties tied to the extremist agenda of their owner. In the response that Leandro Demori prepared for Intercept, which you unscrupulously did not include in the article published by R7 on Monday, we say that the story you are planning is obviously a petty retaliatory tactic against the viral story we recently published, in which we document the pressures exerted by Edir Macedo on his employees to produce pro-Bolsonaro propaganda according to their political preferences.Betsy Reed, Editor-in-Chief
Apparently, including new e-mails repeating the same questions and adding new ones, Bishop Macedo's organization continues its investigation into Intercept, the journalists who work there, and their families, and intends to convey to millions of people these false accusations and defamatory charges on his Sunday night show.
No wonder that with the new times of a coming Bolsonaro regime, the methods of journalism in Rede Record increasingly resemble the intimidation of the Universal Church of Edir Macedo. In 2007, the Folha de S. Paulo reporter, Elvira Lobato, had to respond to 111 lawsuits in several cities in Brazil , led by faithful and pastors of the Universal Church, because she published a story showing how Edir Macedo had built her empire. The strategy of using sheep to prosecute the journalist was so viciously thought that on the same day, Elvira even had audiences in Rio Grande do Sul, Mato Grosso and Piauí, at the same time.
On Sunday night, the station exposed Elvira's face on a national network on the same spectacular Sunday program she intends to use to attack us. "They incited people to file lawsuits against me. And I started to panic. I would say, 'I'm going to be stoned in the street! Because we are talking about believers who will think like this: 'That woman is a devil! What has she done against my faith? Why did she humble my faith? '"
AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER , Macedo publicly confirmed what many already suspected: he would support Bolsonaro's candidacy for the presidency (he originally seemed to support Alckmin, but left the boat after the total failure of that candidacy). Since his public declaration of support for Bolsonaro, Bishop Macedo's press organs have hardly disguised his new pro-Bolsonaro propaganda production function.
On the days before the first round of the elections, on October 7, Bolsonaro announced that he would not participate in the TV Globo debate - traditionally the most important moment of the electoral cycles - claiming to still be taking care of the injuries resulting from the knife attack he suffered. Record announced, however, that it would show, simultaneously to Globo's debate, an interview "exclusive" with Bolsonaro, with questions so white and favorable to him that it surprises that the interviewer did not do them to their knees. The TSE watched everything passively .
It was in this context that the R7 and other journalists from Bishop Macedo's machine began to lament, under the protection of anonymity, that they were transformed from journalists to hostage propaganda disseminators in favor of a candidate seen critically by broad sectors like fascist. It was in this context that Intercept was able to publish a report on the internal workings of the R7 and the strong pressures its journalists are subjected to, being forced to distort the truth and produce propaganda pro-Bolsonaro and antipetista.
It is one thing for Bishop Macedo to use his fortune and his media empire to elect an extremist. It's quite another thing for him to exploit and abuse his media vehicles - his TV is a public concession - to intimidate, investigate and threaten journalists for the crime of publishing critical reports on him and Bolsonaro. This poses a serious threat to freedom of the press: it is virtually impossible to practice journalism on Bolsonaro if it is known that Bishop Macedo's immense fortune and media vehicles will be used to slander and intimidate not only the journalists responsible, but also their families.
Macedo and his machine can spend as much money as they want, employ as much as they want their megaphones to lie, distort and defame. This will occur, at least as they say they plan to do, on Sunday night. Intercept will maintain its unwavering commitment to independent and fearless journalism, which certainly includes, now more than ever, the aggressive and critical scrutiny of Jair Bolsonaro and the billionaire bishop who intends to elect him.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/10/20/no-novo-brasil-do-bolsonaro-o-imperio-midiatico-do-bilionario-edir-macedo-e-used-to-investigate-and- intimidate-journalists-including-the-intercept /
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