Olavo de Carvalho Interviewed
by Donna McLachlan

Cultures of Journalism
ABC Radio National, Australia
Broadcasted September 22nd, 2004

Donna McLachlan – How democratic is the mainstream Brazilian media?

Olavo de Carvalho – Well, it just depends on what you call democratic. Press controls once created by the military dictatorship were abolished by the 1988 Constitution. But there are other forms of control, still more effective. During military government, leftist opposition parties used the news offices of the main newspapers as their headquarters for resisting government. They managed to occupy the chief positions and to exclude from the press every one that was a collaborationist. At that time it was a legitimate form of resistance, but when the military dictatorship crumbled, a new kind of dictatorship was already in action, I mean the internal control of the media by leftist organized militancy. We now live under a new form of censorship, that is not an official one, but is no less despotic than military censorship. I will give you a sample of the state of things. Fourteen years ago, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro founded an organization called The São Paulo Forum, intented to be the strategic coordination of communist and pro-communist movements in Latin America. Nowadays, more than eighty leftwing organizations belong to the Forum, including gangs of terrorists, drug dealers and kidnappers like the Colombian Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces) and the Peruvian Tupac Amaru. It runs a meeting once a year to delineate the blueprint for the seizing of power in every Latin-American country. The ascension of leftwing parties in Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil is due to the coordinate action of the organizations belonging to the Forum. Well, in order to form an idea of the overwhelming power of leftist organizations in Brazilian press, it’s enough to be informed that all big Brazilian newspapers and TV news channels refuse obstinately to let the public to know about of the Forum, notwithstanding the fact that it is not a secret organization an that its proceedings are published year after year by the Cuban official newspaper Granma. Some months before the presidential elections, two years ago, I wrote in my O Globo column that it was immoral to let Brazilian people vote for Lula without knowing the character of his international connections. My colleagues answered that I was a fascist, and the news concerning the Forum are still absent from Brazilian big media. Television anchorman Boris Casoy, a brave man from São Paulo, had the courage to ask Lula about that. Lula said it was better to him to keep his mouth shut, and the matter disappeared for ever. I am still the only Brazilian journalist that from time to time gives the public some news concerning it. Fourteen years of complete silence about the most powerful and active political organization in the continent – this is a feat of censorship unparalelled even by the ones accomplished by the military dictatorship.

DML – Is there, at present, any regulation of the media in your country? (I read about a plan by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to create a national journalists’ council to regulate Brazil’s press.)

OdC – To create some sort of press control, not only in Brazil but everywhere in Latin America, was already in the plans of the São Paulo Forum more than ten years ago. But in Brazil nobody worried about that because most of the press was so loyal to leftwing parties that it seemed implausible that a leftist government would try to tyrannize its own friends. But in leftwing currents there are lots of honest people that didn’t like the corruption in Lula government. These people began to write about it, and when the scandals grew to the point of becoming unbearable, the government resorted to the old Forum project for a national press control agency. Journalists felt of course deeply deceived and insulted, and a lot of their former support for the government became an enraged opposition. Some of them even don’t call me anymore a fascist, but a prophet.

DML – Is regulation necessary? Is the media considered too noisy?

OdC – It’s a very ambiguous state of things. Formerly, leftists that dominate Brazilian media used newspaper and TV channels as weapons to destroy every conservative politician that could offer any effective resistance to the growing power of the left. All the nasty and smelly resources of yellow journalism were used to taint their reputation and, in a more general way, to criminalize capitalism. Former president Fernando Collor de Mello suffered impeachment, but afterwards the criminal court acquitted him of all the charges. He was not guilty, but he was a powerful conservative force, then he had to be destroyed, and so he was. And so many other people. Now, when government argues that Brazilian media are too noisy, there is in these words a streak of psychological cunning of Macchiavelli style: the media know they are too noisy, they are unable to defend effectively against this charge when it is cast against them by the main beneficiary of their loudness. It’s a very strange situation, but Brazil is a strange country.

DML – Would a Press Council attempt to restrict debate about corruption in the government?

OdC – This is of course the main purpose of the Council. The government has nothing to fear from the press in what says respect to ideological matters. Ideologically, our mainstream press is liberal, in the American sense of the word, that means pro-Left. There is no conflict between the media and the government from this point of view. The problem is that Brazilian journalists got used to investigate financial scandals during former governments and they didn’t stop when they were hoped to stop, that is, when Lula became president. The leftist party now in control felt betrayed by their former allies in the press, and now it feels compelled to shut their mouths before bad news concerning the government begin to help the right to reorganize.

DML – What kind of “voice” do activists for social justice have in the media?

OdC – Movements for social justice, both the honest ones and those which are no more than a cover for the São Paulo Forum, were always seen by Brazilian press under a sympathetic light. Brazilians tend to sentimentalize every social issue, and to speak against social justice fighters is considered a lack of compassion. Even the Landless movement, that disguises under false claims for agrariam reform its true character of a communist revolutionary armed organization, was never seriously attacked by the big media. Only after Lula government showed in a most obvious way its totalitarian intentions did the media begin to take consciousness of the real purpose of the Landless and to denounce them. But this has no bad effects over other social justice movements, that are still respected by the press.

DML – Can you talk about the media’s coverage of general federal elections? Do they offer their readers / listeners / viewers a range of views?

OdC – They simply don’t tell the truth. In our last presidential contest, two of the three Lula opponents were members of the São Paulo Forum. They were comitted to help him. This is clearly attested by the Forum proceedings, but this fact never reached the public. The media instead persuaded everybody that the election was the most “transparent” ever made along all Brazilian history. As to the fourth candidate, José Serra, despite of being a leftist himself, deeply comitted to the same Forum causes by his intimate links to the Salvador Allende family in Chile, was not a member of the Forum. This difference was enough to cause the other two to concentrate their attacks on him, sparing Lula. The media pretended to ignore these facts and called the elections “transparent”. Now they probably repent to have helped Lula so much, but now it’s too late.

DML – How has the media changed it’s way of reporting over the years since 1985?

OdC – In 1984 the two main candidates, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula, were both cherished by the mainstream leftist media. Cardoso, a moderate leftist, got to be the winner because he made himself still more moderate to the point of seeming also a reliable man under the eyes of the rightwing remaining currents, which represented no more than fifteen per cent of the voting public. This tiny difference gave him the victory. The media reporting was very honest, because no one of the two candidates had nothing to hide. The reasons for disguising and deceiving came only after 1990, with the foundation of the São Paulo Forum. From this point onwards, there was a huge strategic plan for communist seizing of power in Latin America, and this should not be discussed in public. As the political situation was changed by the advent of this new factor, the media also changed its orientation, turning more and more prone to disguise, to lie and to hide news from the public eyes.

DML – Could you describe how different the media is now, compared to the time under military dictatorship?

OdC – It’s completely different. During the military dictatorship the media were brave and honest, both when they supported the military against the corrupt João Goulart government as afterwards when they stood against the transformation of a provisional military governtment into a long-standing dictatorship. Both conservative and leftist journalists were united in the fight for democracy, and their ideological differences were kept under control by a stern sense of professional duty and moral ideals. The media suffered censorship but managed to publish the forbidden news under cryptic language. The history of Brazilian journalism in the time of the military is full of honourable and even heroic deeds. It’s a hall of fame. Now it’s a hall of shame.

DML – Is it true that much of the media is “in the red”, that is they are running at a loss? Why is this so? Who is making money from the media?

OdC – Brazilian media business was always in the red from the time of the emperors (nineteenth century), owing to the smallness of the reading public. In short, they sold very little, and depended mosty from advertisers in order to survive. But up to the sixties our market economy was too much incipient to sustain big media enterprises. So, the media big shots were compelled to accumulate huge debts in state banks, and they became slaves of the state. From time to time they have a short period of real freedom, when a government is still too young or already too weak and decaying to control them. But when the government is strong, they become weak again.

DML – Do many media outlets represent the voice of the poor and un-educated?

OdC – Not properly. They represent the government social programs, not the poor people themselves. It’s a kind of official, not effective human simpathy for the poor. These ones are ignored unless they speak by the voice of strong political parties, preferentially when these ones are in the government. Just to give you a sample, poor people in the streets depend largely on the spontaneous help they receive from richer people in the form of alms. Every state and city government nowadays mades noisy campaigns to extinguish the habit of giving alms and to persuade people to give their money instead to government aid agencies. Every poor in the streets knows this is no good for him. Every one likes more to receive money directly from good souls than to await in the rows of a government agency. But the media support strongly the government campaign, making as if giving alms was a sin. I never saw a newspaper or a TV channel ask a poor man or woman what he or she thinks about that. Another example is the campaigns for civil disarmament. Eighty-five percent of Brazilian opinion are against it, but the media despises this numbers and acts ad if their support for weapons prohibition was the purest expression of people’s will.

DML – How reflective of all society is the mainstream media?

OdC – Brazilian media is strongly reflective of big business closely associated to government interests and also to middle-class intellectuals that form the leftwing elite in the universities and in the media themselves. But they are not reflective of large amount of Brazilian population, for example the protestants. I am personally a Catholic, but many and many Brazilians converted to protestantism along the last decades and they deserve to be treated with respect. As they had no voice in the media, they began to collect money to found their own newspapers and TV channels. Their newspapers have still very small circulation, but some of their TV channels had an impressive success, despite being still unable to offer a competitive risk to the main corporations like Globo. Despite having many political representatives and being a large electoral force, the protestants are generally treated by the media as fundamentalist lunatics, which absolutely they are not. A third exemple is a personal one. Besides writing for the big media, I run a little electronic newspaper, Midia Sem Máscara, which describes and analyses as much media distortions as possible and publishes many news ignored by the big media. Every influent journalist in this country reads it, and many of them take profit of the informations it gives. But no one quotes it. Never.