The press did not criticize Lava Jato, experts say – 03/20/2024 – Power

The Brazilian press did not adopt the criticality expected of professional journalism in covering Operation Lava Jato and disproportionately reported the work and versions of the police and judicial authorities of the case, according to experts interviewed by the Sheet.

Some of them, however, say that since 2019 there has been a change in this situation, based on the exposure of dialogues between prosecutors and the then judge Sergio Moro.

The messages were obtained by the website The Intercept Brasil, which sought the Sheet then allowed the newspaper to access the collection and produce a series of reports. This occurred after careful research and evaluation of journalistic relevance.

The series of revelations of these messages, known as Vaza Jato, showed the closeness between judge and prosecutors and catalyzed review of decisions in the Judiciary.

The press, according to these experts, should have avoided saying that almost all of the situations covered in the operation were corruption, as some of them would have been classified as irregular campaign financing or conflict of interest.

The fact of generalizing conduct as corruption led to discredit in politics in general, according to them.

Lava Jato completed ten years last Sunday (17) and still raises debates about the conduct of authorities, institutions, companies and media outlets in the case.

ECA-USP professor Eugênio Bucci states that, until Vaza Jato, the press had little critical coverage and that this is an aspect that deserves reflection and can generate learning. “Often it was as if the task force [da Lava Jato] were it not itself the Power, were it not itself the State.”

“What came from her [Lava Jato] It was often received in newsroom routines as reliable information, without the need for checking. In general, it was as if the information was coming to the newsroom from a correspondent rather than from an authority that needs to be viewed with skepticism,” he said.

João Feres Júnior, professor of political science at Iesp-Uerj, states that the press’ actions in Lava Jato sacrificed the plurality of opinions. “Without plurality there is no healthy public debate, without plurality there is no healthy policy, politics becomes contaminated.”

For Feres Júnior, “the performance was terrible for Brazilian democracy and was one of the strongest elements that led to the election of Jair Bolsonaro.” “This results in a sequence of things ranging from an attempted coup, four years of disastrous government and the management of the pandemic.”

Experts talk about the press in general.

A Sheet maintained a critical stance towards the task force, as advocated by Projeto Folha, in addition to producing a series of revealing reports based on messages obtained by the website The Intercept Brasil.

As shown in a review report published in 2021, the newspaper’s reporters exposed Lava Jato’s main findings, but also revealed errors and questions in the conduct of operations, presenting unseemly backgrounds and clear contradictions and listening to experts who disagreed with the way the investigations were carried out. .

According to Marjorie Marona, professor of political science at UFMG, Lava Jato marked the culmination of a communication channel between the press and police and judicial authorities that began in the PF’s major operations in the 2000s and was previously occupied by politicians, in especially in CPI cases.

“This is, in a way, a novelty, compared to historical cases of mobilization of the issue of corruption as a political weapon. Even before Lava Jato, the political dispute around the issue of corruption spilled over into the media through the voices of the politicians themselves , but with Lava Jato, the voice of judicial agents was heard almost exclusively”, he states.

Professor of international and Brazilian studies at the University of Oklahoma Fábio de Sá e Silva says that “the press had a very uncritical relationship with Lava Jato.”

“You see a lot of what we call declaratory journalism, the press merely reproducing the statements of prosecutors in the period from 2014 to 2018.”

According to Silva, from 2019 onwards a change in this scenario began. “There begins to be a turning point when Moro goes to the Bolsonaro government, which causes a first fissure, and then Vaza Jato.”

This understanding is shared by Bucci. “We cannot lose sight of the fact that the main opening of a critical look at Lava Jato, which was Vaza Jato, played a fundamental role on the part of a large part of the mainstream press,” he said.

Feres Júnior says that the opening of part of the press vehicles to Vaza Jato was important, “but it does not cancel the enormous journalistic failure of buying the narratives of the Public Ministry, Moro and Judiciary, over a long period of Lava Jato. damage had already been done.”

Marjorie also highlights the role of the press in Vaza Jato. “We are talking about another moment in which Lava Jato is already very weakened, precisely due to the political choices of its leaders. You have Moro in the Ministry of Justice and Bolsonaro elected”, she states.

“There was a change in the scenario that the press had the sensitivity to capture very quickly, but it doesn’t seem to me that the press coverage in Vaza Jato and Spoofing [operação da PF] catapulted the changes”, he adds.

Experts also spoke of what they call the generalization of corruption. “Lava Jato was a missed opportunity for us to have a full understanding of the history of the relationship between companies, public authorities and parties, knowing how to make the distinctions”, says Silva

For Feres, Lava Jato reduced politics to the issue of corruption. “This is an immoral political pedagogy. The biggest problem was discrediting institutional politics and representative democracy as a whole.”

In addition to the cases being processed in Curitiba, Lava Jato involved authorities from other states, such as Rio and São Paulo, and also complaints presented in Brasília directly to the STF (Supreme Federal Court) by the Attorney General’s Office.

In its first years, the operation enjoyed broad popular support, with approval rates above 60% in Datafolha surveys carried out from 2016 to 2019.