What’s Happened to the Brazilian Press?

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For the original article by Cleber Araújo in Portuguese published on his Facebook page click here.

Ever since the Jucá recordings were released by the powerful and influential media outlet Folha de São Paulo, a number of questions have come to mind: what’s gotten into Folha?

The decline of the nauseating, filthy Brazilian press is obvious to all. It’s hard to find a neophyte now, thanks to the Internet. The international press has exposed how the Brazilian media manipulate politics, and how they want desperately to continue to do so in order to reap the massive rewards. But this is coming to an end…

When the recordings were leaked on Monday, May 23, 2016, we began to feel that something could change. Whose interest was being addressed by the leak? What message was Folha trying to send? These are questions we have to ask. Could it be that they’re beginning to realize they’re losing respect in the world, losing credibility?

When I see a Brazilian photographer like Pulitzer Prize winner Mauricio Lima published in the New York Times, I see it as an answer from the world: the Brazilian press is falling behind.

Every day we watch the growing desperation of TV anchors, editors, and journalists, who attempt to manipulate us with their partisan messages. Somebody please tell them that with the Internet things have seriously changed. Most people now have access to other sources. Foreign correspondents are here, simply observing, and showing the world that things are not as the Brazilian press would like to portray them. We can only be sure of one thing: What is going on with the Brazilian press?

I am absolutely certain that the Brazilian people are waking up from the inertia of having had a single source of information dominate their homes. I would like to tell them that alternative media are also out there, telling it like it is, and becoming reliable news sources. Many others are producing general interest stories, and many reporters now visit places they never had before–places the Brazilian media never goes, if you know what I’m saying…. Things are changing, Madame Brazilian Media, things are changing.

Could it be that Folha has begun to understand this? I hope so.

All I know is that the poor now have a voice and access to more information and they are also producing their own.

The leaked recordings are a preview of things to come. Either the Brazilian media will change, or they will fail as badly as their already-failed newspaper serials, which aren’t even good enough to use as toilet paper.

Cleber Araújo Santos, 40, is a resident of Complexo do Alemão who showcases the favela in in its many forms and moments through social media. He shares daily content through the Complexo Alemão Facebook page and through the Facebook profile of Mariluce Mariá, a local artist who paints in the community and has a stall at the Palmeiras cable car station.