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Brazil: The Media Empire Bows to Blogs

Jose Murilo Junior · 23:50

There is something very different going on in the Brazilian media arena. It all started a week ago with a cover story published in the magazine Carta Capital, headlined: The Plot Which Led to the Second Round. The magazine is known as a ‘leftist stronghold' and, with a modest circulation of 65,000, it normally functions to leverage for more balance in the political coverage performed by the mainstream media. The unusual comes from the attention that the article has attracted from the blogosphere, and how the debate has pushed the powerful Globo TV network and its executive editor of journalism to enter the online debate in order to post its counterclaims against the article.

Dinheiro do dossie On the tragic Friday afternoon that GOL Flight 1907 — which was expected to arrive in Brasilia at 6:12pm — plunged into the Amazon forest with 154 people aboard, this was not the important story in the Brazilian broadcast media. With two days left to the first round of the presidential election, the widely viewed Globo Network nightly news program Jornal Nacional placed greatest emphasis on showing pictures of the money captured by the Federal Police in the alleged election scandal called dossiergate. Strange as it seems, this news program which aired at 8pm did not say a word about the crash, and Brazilians were startled to be informed about the country's greatest airline tragedy by cable CNN.

The story that Carta Capital's reporter Raimundo Rodrigues Pereira tells in an exquisite narrative is how Officer Edmilson Bruno of the Federal Police illegally took pictures of the money and distributed them to journalists from Folha de São Paulo, Estado de São Paulo and O Globo newspapers and to the radio station Jovem Pan on the morning of that same Friday. The existence of an audio file of the conversation where the police officer demands of the journalists that the pictures of the money be shown on that night's edition of Jornal Nacional was mentioned in Carta Capital's article, and an actual copy of the recording was leaked to YouTube earlier this week.

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The Week that Was - Bolivian Blogs

Eduardo Avila · 15:49

Octubre

Cartoon used by permission from artist

Worries concerning a possible civil war in Bolivia have simmered for now. However, cartoon blogger (for a lack of a better term) Joaquin Cuevas was celebrated for his recent parody of the campaign for the Constituent Assembly, which originally said “Todos Juntos Hacia la Asamblea Constituyente.” (Everybody Together Towards the Constitutent Assembly). Instead, his campaign was for a possible civil war in Bolivia sponsored by non-existent National Campaign of Regionalism and Intolerance Pro-Separation of Bolivia.

His blog El Inofensivo Chico Larva [ES] continues to attract rave reviews for his take on current events in Bolivia. Many commenters came from the Bolivian blogger community, such as Ron Del Dia, who said, “I'll pass along this cartoon because it made me reflect…I hope it does the same to my friends on this side of the country.” Others also recognize the talent of Cuevas, Danilestat of Preambulo Rojo [ES] said, “I now become aware that there is talent in this country, you have a gift for social commentary.”

Sometimes they say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but judging from many of the comments admiring and causing others to pause and reflect on the situation in the country; perhaps, a cartoon is worth just as much.

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Voices from Kazakhstan

Leila Tanayeva · 15:28

Walking around the streets of Almaty, we picked up and brought for your attention the conversations from the Kazakh blogosphere.

The recent visit of Kazakh President Nazarbayev to the White House was discussed by LJ user adam_kesher (RU):

Roughly speaking, the United States have two reasons not to annoy Kazakhstan - oil and security, and two things that annoy themselves - corruption that prevents growth, and authoriarianism, which is so unlimited and unpunished, that it led to two political murders.

ghola-tleilaxu: This is a comedy. Interesting one, though.

adam_kesher: It is. Khabar (state TV channel) gives you an impression that everyone in the United States was so happy about the visit.

lunaric: And everyone puts up a good front. Borat's art though should be discussed on intercontinental level :). It is unbelievable how he spoils our image in front of international community!

adam_kesher: He's cool. Have you read about his visit to the Kazakh embassy and the White House? (more…)

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Video exposes child-soldier's identity

Sameer Padania · 08:50

If you've seen the guidelines for this site, you'll know that there are types of footage that we wouldn't post, and circumstances surrounding the shooting of particular videos that mean we wouldn't even link to them. Today's post is about one of those videos.

I was researching a possible post about child-soldiers, when I found a video on a video-sharing site, said to be an interview with a teenage former child-soldier. In the video, the youth makes a number of allegations against the rebel organisation that he claims abducted him, sexually abused him, and sent him out on military operations - allegations broadly consistent with research conducted in his country by respected international human rights organisations.

But unusually for a video carrying this kind of allegation, the youth involved is identified by name, and in the accompanying text, by location. Human rights organisations (and media) would almost always advise protecting the identity of a minor in such a situation (see pages 16 and 17 in this document, for example) - whether by pixellating or obscuring his/her face, by shooting the video so that their face cannot be seen, e.g from behind or in silhouette, or possibly disguising their voice or re-voicing the audio. The photograph below shows how easy it is to pixellate an image to conceal someone's identity.

Example of pixellation to conceal identity

In the case of the video I had found, none of these protocols was followed. I wondered for quite a few days whether to post this video, which I felt brought out many important issues within a conflict where the recruitment of child-soldiers is common. It's horrifying testimony (and by no means rare), and the youth's story deserves to be heard - but the video raises a huge number of questions. Therefore I've decided against showing you the video itself.

The video is quite short, and in it the youth seems to be giving a prepared statement - there's no one asking questions for clarification, as there was by contrast in the Alive In Baghdad video a couple of weeks ago. The text accompanying the video states that the army found the boy after he escaped from his abductors, so I have assumed that the army shot the video.

Did the army explain to him clearly and adequately what the video was for, and how it would be used? At no point in the video or in the accompanying text is it made clear whether the boy in question has given his consent to the use of this video online. Was he given a choice of whether to take part, or of when, where and how it would be filmed? He mentions his parents in the video - were they asked for their consent? If we assume that his alleged abduction and subsequent sexual abuse caused him trauma, what support and follow-up was offered to him? How informed can his consent be considered?

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