Where I go off on the media and political agendas

So I was reading O Globo online yesterday and noticed an interesting story.

It was about the family of engineer João José de Vasconcellos Jr., a Brazilian engineer who was kidnapped in Iraq on 19 January 2005. Apart from a photo of Vasconcellos’ documents that was released shortly after the kidnapping, there has been no word of Vasconcellos for over a year. At the end of last week, his mother wrote a letter to President Lula, begging for action on her son’s case.

It turns out that the Folha ran this story on Friday. They note that the letter criticizes a lack of “transparency” in the Ministry of Foreign Relations’ negotiations to free Vasconcellos and that she would like to know what exactly happened to her son.

When the kidnapping first happened, I found it interesting that it was such big news in Brazil and yet news organizations in the U.S. had not covered it at all and that no one there had ever heard of the case. It made me realize how inward-looking all of us are but it also made me think that we are only likely to hear news of this kind if there is some political motive. For instance, Brazilians and Europeans hear plenty about bombings and kidnappings in Iraq because Brazilian and European newspapers are generally opposed to the war and have strong anti-American tendencies. When I was in Spain in 1997-1998, the press relished news of school shootings or people who went postal in McDonalds while no one understood the Lewinsky scandal. The press covered it to show how silly the U.S. Americans can be.

This is of course true in the United States; neo-liberals like Fareed Zakaria may discuss with interviewees why the “reforms” of the 1990s (forced implementation of neo-liberal policies) failed everywhere but Chile while the New York Times runs stories talking about why pension reform is failing in Chile. Perhaps far more significant was the coverage of the political situation in Venezuela over the last four years. This has included disproportionate coverage of the opposition to the Chávez government and distortion of the actual size of the opposition. Almost no English- or Spanish-language media source in the U.S. has tried to investigate the situation and figure out the motives for the opposition and how they have advanced their cause. I was living in the United States at the time of the 2002 coup and for over a year after that and it became clear to me that there was a gap in media coverage only after Jimmy Carter requested a meeting with one of my colleagues and told him what he was observing on the ground in Venezuela. “But I’ve been watching the Univisión news,” I stated. Then I realized my stupidity: Venevisión is a part owner of Univisión and thus the Chávez opposition in the Venezuelan media controls what stories run on Univisión. Through the whole crisis in Venezuela from the coup to the elections to today, I am yet to see good U.S.-based journalism about the situation in Venezuela let alone about non Chávez-is-evil-related news. Why? Almost all U.S. Americans on all sides of the political spectrum dislike Chávez and the methods through which he came to power.

I am not writing this to sound like Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Actually, I am sort of writing for that reason because I think it is important for all thinking members of any society (and particularly a democratic one) to question motives. Every time you read a headline, you should ask why that headline is there. Why is this news organization covering this story and not another? How have they worded this headline to influence how people think? What are the political motivations behind it? What are the differences between how (or whether) CNN, CNN+ (in Spain), Globo, RTE, El País, El Periódico and the Folha are covering a story like the 2004 Spanish elections? Why was Marcus Valério the top story in O Globo yesterday but below the fold in Folha? How does this ultimately influence who people vote for in October?

The story of João José de Vasconcellos Jr. is a sad one because he has been almost completely forgotten, even in Brazil. Imagine how it might be different if he were a white girl from Utah. Even more interesting, imagine the poor kidnappers. They realized too late that they had a Brazilian and, frankly, no one cared. He isn't valuable enough to advance anyone's agenda.

When one company dominates media outlets (or, when real life is better than a soap opera)

Over the last week or so, I have been watching a developing battle between film directors Walter Salles and his partner Daniela Thomas and the screenwriter João Emanuel Carneiro. Salles and Thomas are about to start shooting a new film that Thomas developed with screenwriter George Moura and Carneiro (note that I don’t know if Carneiro will be credited as a screenwriter; he did help with early versions of the script). Carneiro is now writing the new seven o’clock soap opera, Cobras & lagartos and it turns out that his protagonist has much in common with a protagonist of the new Salles/Thomas film. The character in question was apparently not in the script of the film when Carneiro bowed out of the project but was instead the idea of Thomas and Moura. Unfortunately for them, Thomas and Moura continued to include Carneiro by e-mailing him new versions of the script. Carneiro apparently liked some of their revisions so much that he stole one of them.

Walter Salles found out about this affair through an article about the soap opera in the Folha. No episodes had yet aired, but Salles immediately became suspicious when the article noted that the protagonist would be a flute-playing motorcycle delivery boy who falls in love with a cellist. In the film, a motorcycle delivery boy falls in love with a woman who plays the flute and loves classical music. Salles immediately contacted the television network, Globo. They changed the character’s instrument to the clarinet and turned him into a motorcycle driver (but not delivery boy). The network re-filmed seven scenes from the opening episodes.

After the series premiered, Salles and Thomas decided that the changes were not enough and they went public, choosing the Folha as their outlet. Both seemed very upset and suggested that this would jeopardize their film project.

It has now been confirmed that Salles and his production company, Videofilmes, are suing Carneiro.

You might wonder why the series was allowed to air with very minor changes even when Thomas and Moura have plenty of documentary evidence in the form of e-mails that their character was developed after Carneiro left the project and when it is so clear that Carneiro’s character is borrowed from Thomas and Moura’s. Simple. TV Globo, the television network that is airing the show, and Globo Filmes, the distributor of Salles’ films, are all part of the the massive Globo media giant, which also controls companies that provide cable and internet to many Brazilians, a major music distributor and Rio de Janeiro’s largest daily newspaper. Call me a cynic, but I suspect that Globo did not think that Salles, an independent producer and director at the mercy of distribution, would want to bite the hand that feeds him.

He decided to bite, but it raises a bigger question. How often does this happen to less powerful people who are unable to challenge the Globos of the world?

Ongoing political wranglings with Bolivia

So I don't want to harp on this Bolivia thing, but an update:

-As I had speculated, Petrobras has proclaimed that they will not invest further in Bolivia. This includes projects that were underway, such as an expansion of the gas pipeline from Bolivia to Brazil. They have also stated that they will not pay the increased prices for gas. I hate predictions, but I suspect that this is a bargaining chip that Petrobras will use in renegotiating their contract. They are also threatening to take Bolivia to court. Bolivia has accused Petrobras of "blackmail."

-Chávez. It has been noted that he is trying to play two sides: on one hand, he is touting an alternative hemispheric organization that would exclude the U.S. while leading to greater integration of the Latin American economies. On the other hand, he is congratulating Morales for his bravery.

-"Are we the Yankees?" This is the question asked today by Eliane Cantanhêdes in the Folha Online. She noted very much the quandary that I noted on Tuesday: the fact that Lula approved of Morales; the sector of the government (including the Ministry of Mines) that wants to break completely with the Bolivians; and then there is the business sector in Brazil that is just plain freaked out by the power that Morales wields. She closes by noting:

Lula thought himself the great regional leader, but now he's seeing Brazil turned into the victim of one of these "phenomena." In the 1960s, we screamed, "Go home, Yankees," at the Americans. Today, and in spite of a government that was elected as "leftist", are we the Yankees?"

-Long live alcohol, down with natural gas. There had been a program to switch gasoline-fueled cars to natural gas-fueled. For R$3000 (US$1500) you could convert your car; to date, over 1/3 of the 35,000 taxis in São Paulo had done just that. No longer. No one is taking their car in to do the switch. It's a good time to be in the sugar industry.

Nationalization of resources

So what a political, economic and ideological mess.

During the Bolivian elections, I found myself a bit worried about the outcome because I was worried about Petrobras, the Brazilian petroleum company. I knew that the previous government had fallen over privatization and that the new president would most likely be a nationalist and that the nationalist would probably nationalize the national gas industry and possibly also petroleum.

As most people know by now, Evo Morales was elected and immediately began implementing a nationalist project. He has legalized the coca crop and cozied up to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. It would be difficult to look at Morales and not think of the great populists of the last century: Vargas, Cárdenas, Perón, Franklin D. Roosevelt… and Chávez. And once again it was clear that, just as with Vargas, Cárdenas and Perón, Morales would not resist the temptation and indeed the demands from the public to nationalize the petroleum and natural gas industries.

Yesterday Morales celebrated Labor Day by making the big announcement: Bolivia would seize control of all oil and natural gas resources. In a dramatic action, he sent the army to occupy oil fields and refineries. Although this barely merited a mention in the U.S. media, it was a top headline in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, France and Britain because all of those countries host businesses that have investments in Bolivian natural gas and petroleum. Indeed, Morales’ announcement did have repercussions in the U.S. (stock markets that were up in the morning went down dramatically after news spread), but news from the Americas that does not directly impact the pocketbook rarely makes front-page news in the United States.

While most North Americans might hear the news of nationalization and have no response, a Brazilian who is reasonably aware of current events would hear the news with intrepidation. Over the last nine years, Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil monopoly (which is now a publicly traded company), has become the largest foreign company in Bolivia; Brazilians immediately began to worry about Petrobras and the billions of dollars that they stood to lose. By this morning, there was another growing concern: natural gas. Over half of the natural gas that Brazilians use is Bolivian and Brazilian gas consumption has increased as many apartment buildings now have building-wide water heaters (rather than electric heaters on shower heads). People were worrying about their hot showers.

Still, this issue creates an interesting political and moral problem for the Brazilian left. On one hand, the left is generally opposed to privatization. Even left-leaning proponents of the neo-Liberal bonanza of the 1990s have come to see that some industries—including those that control important resources and services such as electricity, telephone and water—should not be subject to the whims of profit and foreign interest. Beyond that, there is a long-running feeling in Latin America that the people should own resources that are in the ground including gas, oil, minerals, ores and water. This sentiment explains why most Latin American countries have nationalized gas, petroleum and mining industries at least once since the 1930s. Although the most famous examples of this occurred in Mexico and Brazil (both in 1938), it is interesting to note that this is the third time for Bolivia (1937, 1969). Still, it is hard when your country suffers. Petrobras is perhaps Brazil’s biggest patron of the arts, historic restoration and education. Beyond that, financial losses could mean higher natural gas prices, which no one wants.

Of course, if Bolivia has nationalized petroleum twice before, one might wonder why companies like Repsol, Total and Petrobras were willing to invest in the country. It was an open market, a place that needed major capital investment but had vast resources. It was also the late 1990s and I think it was hard for companies to imagine a turn away from the neo-Liberal policies that governed the world. This is particularly the case in countries with large debts to the IMF or the World Bank, both of which were force-feeding privatization on debtors. It is a sort of blind faith that a lot of South Americans in particular have, an idea that new or temporary things are permanent and stable. It is this kind of faith, I think, that allows us to see American democracies as permanent even though most of them date only to the 1980s and history is not on the side of enduring democracy.

So anyway, Morales has expanded a bit on what he means by “nationalization”. It turns out that Bolivia does not have the money that would be needed to build the infrastructure that is required for further development of their industry. Instead, he wants to renegotiate the contracts of foreign oil interests with terms that are more favorable for Bolivia. He admits that he dreams of a strong national oil monopoly like those in Brazil and Venezuela but that he will have to raise the money to fund that—and this seems to be a way of doing that. Meanwhile, most of the companies that are currently operating in Bolivia will probably stay and take the cut in profits but they are unlikely to invest in further exploration or development of resources. This is not so great for Bolivia because of their cash flow problems, but perhaps Morales thinks he will raise enough money through these additional gas and oil taxes to begin exploration in areas where the foreign companies are not yet active. If he does this, however, Morales will have to show the fiscal restraint not to divert the oil profits to populist programs that feed and educate the poor (which is what his mentor Chávez does). If multinationals quit pouring more money into development (something that translates into jobs) and the people do not see Morales giving the oil money back to them, it will not bode well for his tenure.

And back in Brazil, this puts Lula between a rock and a hard place. Over the last three years, he has walked a very fine line between the neo-Liberals of the West and other left-leaning nationalists in South America including Chávez and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina. For the first time, he finds himself publicly having to take sides against Chávez (and Fidel Castro) as he defends his own country’s interests.