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 Miriam Leitão, reporter and columnist for daily O Globo, Globo TV Network and CBN Radio, came to New York to receive the Maria Moors Cabot Award, the biggest prize for journalists of the Americas, given by Columbia University School of Journalism. The prize recognizes distinguished journalistic contributions to Interamerican understanding and Miriam Leitão was the first Brazilian woman to receive it.
The late Roberto Marinho, the founder and owner of the Globo empire, was another Brazilian who was granted the award in the past. Miriam Leitão spoke about her life as a female journalist who arrived in a male world and survived a military dictatorship in Brazil, her view on the political crisis, and how the disappointment might affect Brazilian youth. As an economy writer, one of the first in your generation, can you tell us about the obstacles you came across? It is true; it wasn't easy then. When I first started out, there weren't too many female journalists around. I was there when women started coming in, when they started to make themselves heard, and when women started to take on leading positions. The other day I wrote an article saying that I had seen the women landing on the male territory. We've come a long way but there is still a lot to do ahead of us. Female journalists occupy very few chief positions and it is not for lack of talent. It used to be much harder but we are still fighting. How did you start your professional life, did you write about economy from the beginning? Life just took me there. First I never thought about becoming a journalist, and that was dumb, because it was written all over me. By 10 I was listening to the radio news already. By the time I was 15, I was reading two newspapers a day in a small town, in the middle of nowhere. It was in me. Whenever someone I knew took a trip to a big city I would ask for the big papers. I went to college and I was all set to study History, then came the job as a journalist, which I found in the want ads of a paper I was reading. I went there the following day, took the test, started immediately and haven't left a newspaper office since. I first thought I was going to be doing that while I was in school, but I switched courses because of my passion for journalism instead. I took in the profession by chance and forever. Writing about economy happened pretty much the same way, someone asked me to work with the economy section, I started and that was it. In fact I first started writing in the state of Espírito Santo, where I went to college. That's when I was persecuted and arrested for political reasons, in the early 70s, because of my involvement with student politics at the time of the military dictatorship in Brazil. In 1977 I went to Brasília, where I worked for five years, then São Paulo, for about three years. After that I went to Rio and worked as editor and columnist of economy for Jornal do Brasil for several years. Then I started the economy column for O Globo, where I am now. What was your reaction when you found out you had won the Maria Cabot Moors award? It was a total surprise for me. I never thought of it as a possibility. One day Mac Margolis, who is the correspondent for Newsweek in Brazil told me he was going to indicate my name for Columbia University for the Maria Moors Cabot. He asked me to pick different pieces, so I did and didn't think about it anymore. I was happy with just the fact that Mac thought so highly of me. One Sunday morning when I turned on my computer there was a message from Columbia University. My reaction was... well, I got a little crazy and I called my husband, Sérgio and told him, look, I'm reading here that I got a prize. Something is happening with me, I can't understand what I'm reading. And then I started to cry. I cried for a long time. The feeling that yes, it was worth it, and then, oh! My God, I have to work harder and better, because I now have this responsibility to carry. Describe a day in your life, your daily working routine. Everyday I get up in the morning and ask myself, what is the best journalism I can do? I'm up at 5 am everyday to go to television, where I do the economy talk for the early morning news, Bom Dia, Brasil. Then I head back home, and while I have breakfast, I do my second talk of the day for CBN radio station, over the phone. I spend the rest of the day seeking information, reading, going to the internet, calling my sources, choosing the subject I'm going to write about for the column. At 12:30 pm I'm ready to do another talk for the radio again, this time around on a subject they pick. Sometimes they call me five minutes before the show to tell me what the subject is, so I have to be well informed on everything, I need all the numbers. A new number comes up in the morning and I'll have to talk about it by noon. In the afternoon I mostly talk to sources and write. I have to hand in the column by 8 pm. Sometimes I stay home and work but I like going to the newspaper. I'm a confessed workaholic and I do not want to be cured because I love it Any plans, new ideas, maybe a book? I have a busy daily routine, but time goes by, and as I get older I become more aware of time and. I wish I had more time to do more. There are other things I would like to do, like writing books. I have half written books that I need to finish. In the last few years I've been enlarging my focus. Because this is me, someone who was fighting the military dictatorship by the time I was 18, who was arrested when I turned 19, I may have changed, but I'm still me, the same person, with the same concerns. How to reach what I want, this has changed, but not my objectives. I still want a fair world, a not so unequal Brazil. It's not just the numbers; the goal of economy is to serve people, to help to find better quality of life. What you say reaches many, how do you see this contribution? Those who contribute to opinion, decision makers, entrepreneurs, I know they hear me, and they consider what I'm saying. And what I would like to tell those who do pay attention to what I have to say is that in order to have a stronger economy, it is not only to discuss what is the best relation between debt and GDP. We have to consider how many Brazilian are included in the progress, for ethic reasons, but we also must keep in mind that reducing inequality will make Brazil stronger economically - there will be more people in the market. This should not be the reason to move us into doing the right thing. But if you want a bigger market and a stronger economy you will have to invest in education. Brazil has very poor numbers in the field of education. When a country invests in education, everything else follows, like what happened in Ireland, Korea… Precisely, and let's look at how these countries reached these goals. Let's look at the racial inequality in Brazil, for instance. Brazil has been pretending it doesn't exist, that we never had segregation, but the numbers show this is not true, and I have been in public discussions about this very subject because I think that in order to build a better country we have to get a more honest view of ourselves. How do you see this political crisis in Brazil and the corruption scene? I think this is the worst crisis we have been through in our democracy. It is the worst because it is unexpected and it comes from a political party that was an icon for politics with ethics. And it was affected deeply right there. I think this is worse than the Collor crisis, because Collor was an outsider who came by and sold a plan of salvation for the country, very different from a party who built a political platform for 20 years, taking millions out in the streets defending these ideas. I never saw a President being elected with so much hope behind him. I felt fear, but never expected such a downfall. All of this leads to a lot of thinking. What do you see as the most important contribution from the press now? I think there are two points a journalist must work at. First, we must demand clarity in everything and punishment for those found guilty. We must also work to strengthen our democracy, which has moved forward in Brazil, despite all the obstacles. At every downfall, Brazil has risen stronger in its building of a real democracy. And I'm not talking poetry here. After the Collor years, Brazil created the law against improbity, the first law against money laundering, a lot came after those hard years, from a learning process after his impeachment. And I'm not so worried about our image, I'm more worried about us, and the Brazilian youth is what I'm most concerned about. I think our nation has fought hard for democracy and we have strong convictions. But the young people will ask 'who should I believe now, who should I vote for? I held the red flag, I chanted in the streets, and I believed that Lula would be the solution for our problems. What do I do now with this information?' This is something I really worry about, the consequences of what is happening in the minds of the younger generations who believed. The government has not given out any signs of a similar concern. Lula is leading very poorly with all this, since the very beginning. It is not as if he had made one mistake, it's one mistake after the other. This is particularly painful. One lesson we have learned is that there is nobody holding all the solutions, not even a party that is apparently better than the others. We must create institutions to protect the citizen from the bad behavior of politicians. It is a very hard lesson, but I believe we will mature and grow when we get out of this crisis. It is sad to see how Lula has escaped the subject. His attitude, first pretending he had nothing to do with what is going on, then saying he was betrayed, but he didn't say by whom, then putting the blame on the press, then on the elite, finally he says there was nothing wrong going on, that it was persecution? I just can't grasp it. He didn't give a decent interview, he didn't call a press conference to explain what he really thinks of everything that is happening, he didn't explain things to the population. Lula seems to think that giving an interview is to make a concession to the journalist; he doesn't seem to understand that interviews are a means of communication with the people who elected him and who are taxpayers. Lula can't understand the real role of the press, I think he never did. In three years he held one press conference, limiting questions. During the beginning of this crisis he gave one interview in Paris, a very strange interview of one question... Has journalism in itself changed since you started out as a professional? It has changed a lot in many different senses, not only the subjects but also the way it's done, because of technological progress. Technology has been my great passion; everyday I have new things to learn. My two sons, Vladimir and Mateus, are also journalists and we have this at home, this constant search for what is the best thing to do. Personally I don't believe in doing a journalism that is politically engaged, although I do think you should use your tools as a journalist to seek for a better world. What's the difference? When you are politically engaged, you're always tied to something, a political party, an institution, a group. There are other ways to fight for what you believe. In the fight against inflation, and I've engaged myself deeply in this fight, I've spent years of my life trying to understand the process, because I knew it was a mountain in our way and we needed to get over it. I see my job as getting the information and the technical knowledge on what can be done to fight this illness in the economy, and then explain it to my readers, in a way that anyone can understand. Information is empowerment, and when the journalist gives the right information, this in itself is the great contribution. The job is not to make the public opinion, I even find this arrogant, but either to inform, giving the elements so each reader can make his own choices. For instance, it is not my job to convince anyone that there is social inequality in Brazil, but I'll give the numbers and the reader will make his choice. The numbers for Negroes in Brazil are far worse than the numbers for the white population in everything, literacy, education level, salaries, child mortality rates. So is Brazil a country where there is racial democracy or not? I see my job as not to convince people, but as to inform the discussion. This could sound like politically engaged journalism, but there is a difference, because when you speak according to the beliefs of a political party or organization, you're trying to win people over. But when you give the information for people to make their own choices, it's a much more democratic way of participation. I think all subjects are intertwined. I can't just see financial economy without relating it to all the social aspects, but I'm not here to convince anybody, or to think that people should be interested in the same things I am or in the same way. Clara Angelica Porto is a Brazilian bilingual journalist living in New York. She went to school in Brazil and at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Clara is presently working as the English writer for The Brasilians, a monthly newspaper in Manhattan. Comments welcome at
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