Brazzil

reporters that get involved too deep normally end up dead, or at least threatened with death. Check out reporters without borders and numerous other international "press freedoms" sites, brazil has had many abuses in its history and even up to today....just ask Lula.

In my experience in brazil there are only TWO organizations that people fear, and deservedly so. 1. The Federal Police and 2. Receipta Federal

Unfortunately when you have vast corruption throughout the judicial branch it's all gonna end up in a pizza-pie party.

Free press, a fearful press, not really a free press but a soap opera of a free press. These are not reporters they are actors acting as reporters.

Good reporters get killed, so do good soldiers and police. A country not worth dying for is not worth living for.

If the press is in fear of its life the country is in a state of gangsterism, fascism, masquerading as a democracy.

Reporting is a dangerous business. Journalism is about death, murder corruption. Those that are perpetrating the crimes have a vested interested in silence, invisibility. They are dangerous people, they deal in death, murder and corruption.

What is one more dead reporter. Look at Venezuela. It takes a kind of fearlessness to be a journalist. Most American journalists, the great ones, the fearless ones, 60 Minutes et al, were journalists in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, they know despotism, they know a murdering bastard when they see one and have been close enough to death and the threat of death to report.

It is a noble thing these reporters do. Sometimes, like wittnesses they end up dead, but America has real police, a real FBI. When was the last time a Brazilian was under fire. How many Brazilian reporters are in Iraq, or Bosnia?

The press here do not really function as a Fourth Estate, they are more the writers of pulp fiction, they are rag merchants. The profession of journalism is a dangerous profession, people get killed. There is no sacrifice of life, risque of life. And the fruit they bare is like mediocore wine.

Free press, a fearful press, not really a free press but a soap opera of a free press. These are not reporters they are actors acting as reporters.

Unfortunately, the great majority of the population likes actors acting as reporters,because they provide cheap entertainment. If one really stops and thinks for a while, he will discover that the Journalists these days have gone into entertainment business (Especially in the TV).

I dont think that we have alternative press.But it heartens me to observe that more and more Brazilians now have access to the alternative media, thanks to the Internet.

Writes the truth regarding our great history of journalistic freedom and the courage it takes to be out on the front line or challenging the rich and powerful, we have a long history of Berstein and Woodwards, Cronkites and Wallace's. But alas, we to have slipped, with cable and network news being a rating game, there is more coverage on the Paris Hilton jail term, Britney's crotch shot, or Natalie Holloways disapperance in Aruba, all over covered on news networks. Most journalists are more worried about their hairstyles than the news.

There is not enough coverage on the issues of the day, in fact, the lead up to the invasion of Iraq was poorly covered the reporters becoming lackeys of the Bush administration and not doing their due diligence, due to fear of losing their Whitehouse access. A free press is supposed to keep the administartion honest. Who is going to report on this Illegal Immigration bill that will provide "Z" visas to illegal immigrants allowing them to stay here indefinetly? Last night I had dinner with some of my wife's friends, they were saying the Coyotes are so overwhelmed right now the fee has gone from $10,000 to almost $20,000 in anticipation of Bush signing this shameful Bill and peoples desire to get into the US. They laughed when I asked how the would prove they had been here since 2005, forged documents, a Brazilian art, would solve that problem. They were also all bitcing about the housing market, one nail salon owner saying she could no longer accept checks from Brazilians as half are bouncing. So now we will have a spike in illegal immigration just as the economy slows???

I agree with Joao, thank God for the internet, Brazilians, Americans, and other countries with free access can get their information there, an often much better way than traditional news outlets. Still, in South America, Brazil's press is the best of the poor bunch, poor Venezuelans...where are they going to get the truth, ironic that Chavez called Brazil "an American lackey" last week. He is buying AK's and MIG's...what for? Is Brazil ready for a confrontation? They should be getting ready, the economy in the city of Rio is more than the entire country of Venezuela, why take Chavez's s**t...bite back! He loves the poor so much he has made 200,000 more of them!

thank God for the internet

And dont forget Al Gore too

The best Brazilians actors are Lula and his team of crooks, cheaters and liars, plus ALL the politicians from left to right political parties and including ALL your INJUSTICE DEPT people !

Such sting operations may be dramatic, but sadly the courts are not matching the police's vigour. No one accused of selling over-priced ambulances or paying stipends to congressmen has been convicted. Scandals trigger a flurry of temporary arrests—more than 4,000 in Federal Police operations since 2003. After that, suspects can count on Brazil's overburdened and inefficient judiciary to keep them out of jail.

The costs of corruption are huge. One study found that in districts with fewer than 450,000 inhabitants—90% of the total—a tenth of the money transferred by the federal government was gobbled up by graft. The latest scandal may slow the government's ambitious infrastructure spending programme, centred on energy projects. The weakening of Mr Calheiros dents the government's influence in the Senate, where its majority is slim. “This is starting to take over the congressional agenda,” says Alexandre Marinis of Mosaico Economia Política, a consultancy.

With Congress lie some of the solutions as well as much of the problem. It is rethinking the practice of allowing congressmen and parties to insert pet projects into the budget, which the executive can then approve as a way to buy legislative support. Some want a reform of politics to make congressmen more accountable to voters and to ban private donations in election campaigns. There are calls for a law to implement the constitutional right to freedom of information.

Even the Federal Police has not emerged unscathed from its own investigations. Two senior officers were asked to step down temporarily this week after allegations that they had interfered in earlier inquiries that threatened their colleagues. Details of Operation Razor were leaked to the press, some via a DVD with the soundtrack of “The Godfather”. Congress is mulling ways to guarantee the secrecy of such investigations. The backlash may dim the Federal Police's star power.









http://www.economist.com/world...id=9257819

It is farcical how the term investigative reporting in used to ruin many live with no other intent but to drive up ratings by the populist ignorant media channels, particularly in the medium of television.
In re the boob toob, gone are the day of respectable journalists such as the Severides, Murrows and Cronkites and in come the baratas and c**kroaches such as Hanson, Grace, Rivera et all. In Brasil much the same. When Roberto Marinho was alive the Globe was a marvelous respectable newspaper. Today it has degenerated into sleeze especially with ti's rede Golbo division and its vitriolic withc hunting tactics.

Over time this results in fear and a strange brred of domestic terror brreded by uncontrolabel wiretapping, zero respect for anyones privacy, and the use of the word corruption for any purpose that will serve to further ones own ambition. It appears that we have reached another age of Robespierre, combinged with the Salem days all over again. Sad as it is to say, even the press needs some limits, along with out of control law enforcement, but these two institutions shall never be touched until the cancer of totaltariansm grips all of society.