SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Brazil's far-right, scandal-plagued, evangelical pastor-billionaire Edir Macedo is supporting Jair Bolsonaro ahead of the upcoming presidential runoff election. (Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/Wikimedia Commons)
In Bolsonaro's New Brazil, Far-Right Evangelical Billionaire's Media Empire Is Being Exploited to Investigate Journalists
Edir Macedo, known as The Bishop, is now an explicit supporter of far-right extremist and presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro
Oct 20, 2018
The highly likely ascension to power of far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro is already unleashing a climate in which journalists who are critical of him and his movement--including several writing for The Intercept--are being subjected to an aggressive campaign of personal investigation, attempted intimidation, and thuggish scrutiny of family members.
These attacks are being orchestrated by the media outlets owned by a far-right, scandal-plagued, evangelical pastor-billionaire, Edir Macedo (universally known as The Bishop and founder of the sprawling Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), who is now an explicit supporter of Bolsonaro. Macedo's vast media empire--one that includes the nation's second-largest TV outlet (Record), online portals (R7) and various other news agencies--is now being flagrantly abused to impose punishment and retaliation against journalists for the crime of reporting critically on Bolsonaro, his movement, and Macedo's companies.
On Saturday (Oct. 13), The Intercept published, in Portuguese, an expose on how journalists inside R7, a huge online portal owned by Macedo, are "hostages" to their owner's agenda, barred from publishing negative stories about Bolsonaro and generally forced to sacrifice their journalistic integrity to serve Macedo's extremist political agenda. Written for The Intercept by the Brazilian journalist Leandro Demori, the article was based on reports from distraught R7 journalists who spoke anonymously. The article went viral in Brazil, quickly becoming one of the most widely read Intercept articles of the year. On Thursday, in the wake of that reporting, the long-time chief of Record TV's flagship news program, Luciana Barcelos, resigned.
Throughout 2018, The Intercept has published some of the most aggressive and widely read investigative reporting in Portuguese that has been critical of the Bolsonaro movement. Indeed, long before a Bolsonaro presidency was even thinkable, when he was still a fringe member of Congress, The Intercept has been critically covering him; in a 2014 article, after he told a female colleague in Congress that she was too ugly to "deserve" his rape, we pronounced him "the most misogynistic, hateful democratic official in the democratic world." Late last year, Bolsonaro, to his large Twitter following, used an ugly epithet for LGBTs to, in essence, pronounce me a faggot after I described him as a fascist.
The Intercept has also, in a series of investigative articles written by Brazilian journalists for The Intercept, shed extensive light on the strangely stalled police investigation into the assassination last March of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco, the black, LGBT, favela-born, leftist human rights activist who devoted her career to denouncing police abuse and human rights violations until assassins ended her life with four bullets in her head, as she rode in a car on a Rio street.
Read the full article here.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
© 2023 The Intercept
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law, and a former staff writer and editor at First Look media. His fifth and latest book is, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State," about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Glenn's column was featured at Guardian US and Salon. His previous books include: "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful," "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics," and "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency." He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, a George Polk Award, and was on The Guardian team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public interest journalism in 2014.
The highly likely ascension to power of far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro is already unleashing a climate in which journalists who are critical of him and his movement--including several writing for The Intercept--are being subjected to an aggressive campaign of personal investigation, attempted intimidation, and thuggish scrutiny of family members.
These attacks are being orchestrated by the media outlets owned by a far-right, scandal-plagued, evangelical pastor-billionaire, Edir Macedo (universally known as The Bishop and founder of the sprawling Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), who is now an explicit supporter of Bolsonaro. Macedo's vast media empire--one that includes the nation's second-largest TV outlet (Record), online portals (R7) and various other news agencies--is now being flagrantly abused to impose punishment and retaliation against journalists for the crime of reporting critically on Bolsonaro, his movement, and Macedo's companies.
On Saturday (Oct. 13), The Intercept published, in Portuguese, an expose on how journalists inside R7, a huge online portal owned by Macedo, are "hostages" to their owner's agenda, barred from publishing negative stories about Bolsonaro and generally forced to sacrifice their journalistic integrity to serve Macedo's extremist political agenda. Written for The Intercept by the Brazilian journalist Leandro Demori, the article was based on reports from distraught R7 journalists who spoke anonymously. The article went viral in Brazil, quickly becoming one of the most widely read Intercept articles of the year. On Thursday, in the wake of that reporting, the long-time chief of Record TV's flagship news program, Luciana Barcelos, resigned.
Throughout 2018, The Intercept has published some of the most aggressive and widely read investigative reporting in Portuguese that has been critical of the Bolsonaro movement. Indeed, long before a Bolsonaro presidency was even thinkable, when he was still a fringe member of Congress, The Intercept has been critically covering him; in a 2014 article, after he told a female colleague in Congress that she was too ugly to "deserve" his rape, we pronounced him "the most misogynistic, hateful democratic official in the democratic world." Late last year, Bolsonaro, to his large Twitter following, used an ugly epithet for LGBTs to, in essence, pronounce me a faggot after I described him as a fascist.
The Intercept has also, in a series of investigative articles written by Brazilian journalists for The Intercept, shed extensive light on the strangely stalled police investigation into the assassination last March of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco, the black, LGBT, favela-born, leftist human rights activist who devoted her career to denouncing police abuse and human rights violations until assassins ended her life with four bullets in her head, as she rode in a car on a Rio street.
Read the full article here.
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law, and a former staff writer and editor at First Look media. His fifth and latest book is, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State," about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Glenn's column was featured at Guardian US and Salon. His previous books include: "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful," "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics," and "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency." He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, a George Polk Award, and was on The Guardian team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public interest journalism in 2014.
The highly likely ascension to power of far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro is already unleashing a climate in which journalists who are critical of him and his movement--including several writing for The Intercept--are being subjected to an aggressive campaign of personal investigation, attempted intimidation, and thuggish scrutiny of family members.
These attacks are being orchestrated by the media outlets owned by a far-right, scandal-plagued, evangelical pastor-billionaire, Edir Macedo (universally known as The Bishop and founder of the sprawling Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), who is now an explicit supporter of Bolsonaro. Macedo's vast media empire--one that includes the nation's second-largest TV outlet (Record), online portals (R7) and various other news agencies--is now being flagrantly abused to impose punishment and retaliation against journalists for the crime of reporting critically on Bolsonaro, his movement, and Macedo's companies.
On Saturday (Oct. 13), The Intercept published, in Portuguese, an expose on how journalists inside R7, a huge online portal owned by Macedo, are "hostages" to their owner's agenda, barred from publishing negative stories about Bolsonaro and generally forced to sacrifice their journalistic integrity to serve Macedo's extremist political agenda. Written for The Intercept by the Brazilian journalist Leandro Demori, the article was based on reports from distraught R7 journalists who spoke anonymously. The article went viral in Brazil, quickly becoming one of the most widely read Intercept articles of the year. On Thursday, in the wake of that reporting, the long-time chief of Record TV's flagship news program, Luciana Barcelos, resigned.
Throughout 2018, The Intercept has published some of the most aggressive and widely read investigative reporting in Portuguese that has been critical of the Bolsonaro movement. Indeed, long before a Bolsonaro presidency was even thinkable, when he was still a fringe member of Congress, The Intercept has been critically covering him; in a 2014 article, after he told a female colleague in Congress that she was too ugly to "deserve" his rape, we pronounced him "the most misogynistic, hateful democratic official in the democratic world." Late last year, Bolsonaro, to his large Twitter following, used an ugly epithet for LGBTs to, in essence, pronounce me a faggot after I described him as a fascist.
The Intercept has also, in a series of investigative articles written by Brazilian journalists for The Intercept, shed extensive light on the strangely stalled police investigation into the assassination last March of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco, the black, LGBT, favela-born, leftist human rights activist who devoted her career to denouncing police abuse and human rights violations until assassins ended her life with four bullets in her head, as she rode in a car on a Rio street.
Read the full article here.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.