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 This time, people from the Veja weekly magazine paid heed to the formal requirements and the minimum concerns of the journalistic primer. The charge about the remittance of US$ 3 million from Cuba to the presidential campaign of the ruling Workers Party (PT) (Veja, number 1929, 11/02/2005, pp. 46-53; in the cover, "Cuba's Dollars for Lula's Campaign" and in the headline of the main text, "Campaign of Lula Received Cuba's Money") tried to avoid the mistakes of the preceding "bombs."
This time around, Veja did not express an opinion or engage in controversy, it did not hide the sources, it openly recorded the interviews, it revealed where and how the recordings were made, and it followed through with supplemental information and still pointed to the built-in contradictions contained in the report itself. Nothing wrong with all that.
What's wrong with Veja's new blockbuster piece then?
The rest: the charge presupposes a gigantic, incommensurable, stupidity level in the operation's two ends: the Cuban government and the PT leadership. It's hard to believe that experienced politicians here and in the Caribbean have embarked in a so rudimentary adventure.
No minimally responsible politician would risk the future of his party with a so dangerous and senseless operation. Not even congressmen Roberto Jefferson or Waldemar da Costa Neto.
Fidel Castro has already made glaring mistakes, the PT leadership has already made unforgivable mistakes, but it is unthinkable that they might have planned together such utter nonsense and such epic madness. There are limits for stupidity. That's what makes Veja's charge implausible.
Shot in the Dark
This basic unlikelihood halted the proverbial snowball run. There was a certain frisson in the electronic media on Saturday [October 29) at night and on Sunday. O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper was the only one to get excited with a chance of getting some mileage out of the episode and detonated a front page headline Sunday using the Veja material.
O Globo was more interested in the feat of Rio's police who were able to kill the gangster Bem-Te-Vi and the Folha de S. Paulo was thrilled with the federal government's social programs. They didn't pay much heed to Veja's story.
There wasn't ammunition enough for a PT outcry against the "media conspiracy" or to repeat the platitudes of Hugo Chávez against the "reactionary media".
Veja will stay in the arena to be beaten all alone through Saturday or, at best, through Friday afternoon, when the leading media newsrooms will already know the next issue's content. If by Saturday nothing consistent can be found to be presented as evidence, the magazine runs the risk of being left talking to itself.
Here resides the second mistake of this kind of "suicidal report" - he who sets off the explosive device many times has to sustain the story by himself. The article was built around declarations of people (Rogério Buratti and Vladimir Poleto) who are having trouble with the justice, former aides to the former mayor of Ribeirão Preto, Antonio Palocci, who is now the Finance Minister, but at that time was Lula's campaign coordinator. The main piece of both depositions is Ralf Barquete, who is already dead.
If Veja cannot pull a trump card from its sleeve in the coming weekend, the charge follow-up should occur in the sphere of one of the congressional inquiries, probably the Bingos probing. It means that, despite all cautions, Veja took a shot in the dark.
The magazine trusted the political temperature, sure that it would be capable of leading to new unfoldings. It banked on the imponderable. In such cases, journalism takes a leave of absence and esotericism comes into work instead.
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. You can reach him by email at obsimp@ig.com.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Arlindo Silva.
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Serious intelligent answers please!