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.