Who are the geniuses who invented those superimposed covers full of advertisements and constantly scoff at what is most noble in newspapers and magazines? And what about those odd advertising formats in the middle pages of publications, killing all the information around them – which creativity laboratory produced them?

Could the advertisers themselves be the ones to blame for subverting the paradigms of due respect to the reader, that have existed for decades? Or is it the fault of the ad agencies who, acting on behalf of advertisers, take advantage of the crisis that left newspapers and magazines struggling to stay afloat, so they could compromise their dignity and impose the supremacy of paid copy? 

There are clients and clients, as well as agencies and agencies, ad executives and ad executives, media outlets and media outlets – it would be unfair to generalize. But we can't ignore the overall picture – the printed media in Brazil have lost their composure. Very few are the companies who are able to resist the blackmailing practices of advertisers and agency owners.  

And none of the business groups, in this case ANJ (National Newspaper Association), ANER (National Association of Magazine Editors) or even Conar (National Council of Auto-Regulation in Advertising) has had the courage to complain about this dangerous disfigurement compromising the most fragile of media segments. With no corporate armor whatsoever, those who would like to resist are the ones who capitulate.

Today, advertising has become more important than even the most important piece of information. In the old days there was a sense of modesty, even when skeptics stated that the only place to find the press is in the back of the ads. Mockery and taunting are what we have now.   

The Biggest Adversary

All the headlines, the hierarchization of information, the search for visual impact and everything else that journalistic artistry has created during at least two centuries are carried downstream when a powerful advertiser decides to burn his inventory and resolves that his advertisement must superimpose the magazine cover or be placed on top of the front page of a newspaper, regardless of the news they may contain.

In the case of dailies, the executioners are the huge retail chains who seem impermeable, with rare and honorable exceptions, to the moral itchings of middle-size entrepreneurs.

Heavy duty retail businesses do not bother with dumping, disloyal competition or wrongful withholding of taxes – they actually use those practices to knock down the doors of the club of the largest advertisers in the country.

And the press, which should stop the abuse, not only accepts it but also becomes their beneficiary and accomplice.  

The new starlets of the advertising market (telephone service operators and cell phone manufacturers) are the last ones to join the anything-goes attitude: besides superimposed or fake covers in newspapers and magazines, they also corrode the inside pages by imposing advertising designs flagrantly prejudicial to the act of reading the information contained in them.  

To whom can readers, who pay for their issues, appeal in order to have information free of manipulations and tricks? The ombudsman of Folha de S. Paulo has complained and before him, this Observatório, but the discussion does not appear in the weeklies or in the pages of Meio & Mensagem.

And to whom journalism companies appeal when they finally resolve to invest in their media outlets? To the same marketplace, of course. Agencies and advertisers can't hide their enthusiasm for the triviality press and that thing called “journalism light”.

The same market that demotes information as secondary in order to benefit advertisements hates international news, political commentary, interpretation copy and cultural journalism and l-o-v-e-s copy on behavior & manias, medicine & health pages, food & beverage sections, showbiz sections and, above all, columns with society news (in which the ad agency owners are frequent appearances).   

Who is the biggest adversary of the free press? 

After so many dictatorships and censorships, most people would tend to blame governments. Wrong: governments are defeated in elections. This so-called “market” remains standing and giving orders. 

Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR—Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) and editor of the Observatório da Imprensa. He also writes a column on cultural issues for the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil. You can reach him by email at obsimp@ig.com.br.

Translated by Tereza Braga. Braga is a freelance Portuguese translator and interpreter based in Dallas. She is an accredited member of the American Translators Association. Contact: terezab@sbcglobal.net.

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