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Senators Antonio Carlos Magalhães and José Sarney are the
longest-living Brazilian oligarchs.
What differentiates them from
their predecessors and ancestors is the control they
exercise over the local
and the national media.
By
Alberto Dines
The 1930 revolution put Getúlio Vargas in the highest office in the country, but what it really accomplished was
the consummation of all tenentista movements of the 1920s against the oligarchies of the Old Republic. It finished off a few
fiefs, but Estado Novo created new ones.
Each new jerk in Brazilian politics replaces a bunch of tribal chiefs with another. What the Federation is, in fact, is a
collection of local mandarins succeeding each other and making themselves eternal with different names, acronyms and disguises.
They challenge economic cycles, dribble political maneuvers, control the generation succession and fill every vacuum of power.
The longest-living and legitimate Brazilian oligarchs are Senators Antonio Carlos Magalhães and José Sarney. The
others—such as Quércia, in the interior of São Paulo—are in advanced stage of decomposition and will never manage to gather
these many powers and survive these many jolts.
The thing that differentiates this duo of barons from their immediate predecessors and remote ancestors is the
control they exercise over the media. And not only the local media (radio, TV and newspapers) but also, and mainly, the national media.
When he was President, Sarney commanded an abundant distribution of concessions and opportunities and, when
put against the wall, he knows how to ask for retribution. The best proof of this is his long piece on page 2 of
Folha de S. Paulo, contradicting the most straightforward editorial procedures in order to avoid conflicts of interest in the texts of its
best-known columnists. Note that the senator-author, in his Friday column, is never qualified as the president of the Senate.
The newspaper pretends that Sarney is a collaborator just like the others. He is not: he has interests, he makes
moves and, most importantly, he represents and presides at a power that the press should examine with total neutrality and
withdrawal. As "the fine silver in the house", he deserves special deference. His colleagues on the same page, who are among the
best opinion-makers in the country, are prevented in advance from contradicting, criticizing or denouncing the man who is
not only the president of Congress but the owner of Maranhão State.
Antonio Carlos Magalhães, also known as ACM, is the dean of all oligarchs because he has been in power since
Juscelino Kubitschek times, although he was a member of UDN [National Democratic Union, the party that opposed JK]. Sarney
only arrived almost a decade later. He was the most faithful servant of the military dictatorship and, later, against his will, also
its grave digger.
ACM is more truculent, more daring than his colleague from Maranhão. In the position of Minister of
Communications, he was the de facto concessionary of not only an incredible quantity of radio stations but also TV repeaters in the
middle of nowhere Brazil. ACM made an indelible mark in social communication in Brazil. He was the producer of one of the
most concentrated media systems in the democratic world.
Since he never had the literary ambitions of his colleague, but a phenomenal appetite for power, ACM always
worked in the shadow. In all levels. And he did it so well that
carlismo became, from a typically
baiano political phenomenon, one of the most powerful political lobbies in the country—involving columnists, op-ed writers, publishers, branch directors,
editors and, most of all, owners of communications companies with journalistic whims.
Thanks to a network built around exchanges of favors, ACM managed the marvel of producing news and controlling
their repercussion at the same time, which is the utmost expression of the art of the factoid. In recent years, he added the
advances offered by technology to this "journalistic" expertise, launching a new school in the market—bluff journalism:
transcribing recorded telephone conversations and offering them simultaneously to the main media outlets. Anxious to avoid being
run over by the competitors, they reproduced anything as long as the origin was a recording—legal or illegal, truthful or
distorted, it didn't matter.
One Hundred Days
The feat, which was supposed to be ACM's masterpiece, ended up as his perdition: the planned recording of a
deposition at the Federal Public Ministry became the instrument of a scandal, which cost him his Senate mandate. He still managed
to succeed in a few maneuvers aimed at controlling its after-effects, but it was evident that his journalistic path was worn
out. Copy fatigue: his loyal friends offered him what they could: a sympathetic silence.
Megatapping is too big, too deep, too shocking to be controlled. It is the enlarged portrait of an oligarchy planted in
all spheres—from the police to the judiciary, from the local to the state level. It can be the beginning of the end of
coronelismo in the Brazilian media.
In order to deter an eventual carlista relapse and thwart political maneuvers of a muffling nature, we must point out
the following:
** The scandal was raised on Friday (Feb 7) by columnist Dora Kramer
(O Estado de S. Paulo and Jornal do
Brasil), Folha de S. Paulo and, the next day,
Isto É—the latter with subsidies obviously granted by the Senator-Interceptor himself.
** As the week went by, Folha did a splendid investigation and editing job. A model job, if it had not reduced,
drastically and almost in a kind of magic trick, the space, the emphasis and the prominence of the coverage the following weekend
(Feb 14-15).
** O Globo has been discreet from the beginning. Their pleiad of columnists punctuating the newspaper from the
first to the last page, in wonderful gear, succeeds in keeping the same chilliness of the previous episode, when the Senator
resigned his mandate. At some point a green light will have to come on and authorize firmer performances. It would have to be
right before or immediately after ACM turns into a
Geni [a reference to an execrated prostitute in a Chico Buarque's popular song].
** Admissible, the supposition that
Folha's cooling off or Globo's moderation from the beginning, could be
credited to the concern with the developments encroaching upon the Senator's private life. Commendable scruples, if the stories
published during the weekend dealt with other aspects of the case and not personal ones. There is, in this episode, at least one
dozen angles, abuse and serious infractions to be investigated without necessarily exploring something as painful for a family
as the public exposure of the devious behavior of their head.
** Veja magazine, which in recent years has been succeeding in freeing itself from ACM's influence, has cut any
direct or indirect connection, making it impossible to return to the previous status quo: ACM can no longer count on the
largest-circulation weekly in the country. A regional oligarchy, as planted as it may be in the popular classes, cannot stay this
vulnerable with the so-called "multipliers of opinion" all over the country. It is lamentable that the ostensive rupture with the
person who for 20 years operated as a true eminence
grise finally materialized by means of a cover story related with more
personal aspects.
** Época (issue 248, 2/17/03) deserves special praise because, while published by the Globo Group, it has
established (or was authorized to establish) an autonomous editorial behavior. The tendency manifested itself very clearly last year,
when the weekly had a major role in covering the police investigation which caught the collection of 50
reais bills belonging to the Sarney family. The cover story, again related with the Senator's private life, signaled the irremediable isolation of ACM
within the most powerful of all Brazilian communication groups.
** Isto É and Carta
Capital, in this episode, are not showing signs of securing their independence. The first had an
extremely discreet line on the cover and a mere four pages of information. The latter, one single page only.
** O Estado de S. Paulo has also adopted a linear, natural behavior, without the zigzags of the competition. They
got in slightly late, with no daring advances and no suspicious back-ups. They were professional.
Changes not promised and hopes unfurled may materialize before the first 100 days of the new administration are
completed. The end of the oligarchies represent the end of patronage and the path will be opened to Zero Hunger, Zero
Thirst and Decency 100.
It all depends on the media.
[Text completed at 23h50 of 2/16/03]
KING INTERCEPTOR
New Embarrassment for the Senator
In the last few years, the name of Senator Antonio Carlos Magalhães has been connected with abundant distribution
of intercepted material to the "investigative" reports of Brasília. In the last episode, on February 2001, the vice-roy of the
Brazilian Nordeste made a big mistake when he planned a pseudo-tapping operation with the help of
Isto É and public attorney Luiz Francisco, of the Federal Public Ministry.
He was supposed to make crushing revelations but he tripped on himself: inadvertently, he admitted that the knew
the votes of each Senator in a secret voting session. It became clear that he had ordered the violation of the computer
system of the Senate's electronic panel. In order to escape expulsion, he had to resign.
Now, less than a week after returning to office, the PFL Senator shows up involved with another tapping. An illegal
one, made on the telephones of his arch-enemy Geddel Vieira (PMDBA-BA) and, what is worse, with evidence that he
received copies of the tape transcriptions from the police department of his state. There are strong suspicions that PT politicians
in Bahia have also had their conversations intercepted during this same operation.
Senator ACM's fingerprints are in his declarations to
Folha de S. Paulo (Friday, 2/7). Feigning malice and stating
that he didn't know about the tapping, he suggested that the content of the tapes be immediately investigated. Again he
betrayed himself: it was exactly what he wanted. The next day,
Isto É already ran the facsimiles of the transcription with
annotations made by the pen of King Interceptor himself. (Issue dated 2/12).
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, email:
tbragaling@cs.com
This article was originally published in the
Observatório da Imprensa (The Press
Observatory)— www.observatoriodaimprensa.com.br
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