Sex & Violence in Brazilian Press

In 2009, the group ANDI (News Agency of the Rights of Children) has published a guide for journalism defining not only the inherent rights of children according to the Institute of the Rights of Children and Teenagers, but also how the press should treat stories involving violence against children. Among their recommendations:

- Children have the right to privacy, and shouldn’t be overtly exposed by the press in their story accounts.

- Any images or reports that could endanger the child or anyone around the child (even when the identities are omitted or switched) should not be published.

- In the case of an interview, make sure that the parents or responsible guardians are aware and communicate to the child that he or she is being interviewed by the press.

The list has a few more items warning journalists of the sensitivity of dealing with children, who were abused or used in pornographic movies or pictures, as well as children and teenagers who have committed crimes and are now the main leads on a current story. It also lists recommendations on, for instance, when it is appropriate to film and air children’s images on television. Basically, journalists are instructed to never show the child or teenager when:

- The teenager has committed a crime.

- Working boys and girls.

- Children or teenagers who have been sexually abused or exploited.

- Boys and girls who have suffered any act of aggression.

- Parents of children or teenagers who have been sexually abused or exploited.

According to the list, only pregnant girls can be appropriately filmed and spoken to, as long as they are aware of the nature, intentions and objectives of the interviewer.

Finally, a study published by ANDI in 2008 shows that “according to the studies performed by ANDI in partnership with Childhood Brazil between 2000 and 2006, the space destined to the abuse and exploitation of boys and girls in the Brazilian press has risen 173.65%.” In fact, it has risen since 1973, when a crime that shocked Brazil finally called the attention of its citizens to such vile acts of exploitation, when 8-year-old Aracelli Cabrero Crespo was raped and brutally murdered.

Ever since, following somewhat of a different trend set by many media critics who advocate for less violence in the press, ANDI fights for the exposure of more violence against children and teenagers, and their efforts, according to the study above, have worked better than expected.

On the other hand, the study reveals that “the press needs to advance in its capacity of presenting an ampler panorama of the problem. The study shows, for example, that newspapers do not usually discuss the consequences of the phenomenon in a more expansive manner. In 2002, 16.8% of the stories about sexual crimes against children and teenagers debated solutions for the proposed questions, and only 5.25% of those discussed actions implemented by the public sector.”

This basically means that the growth of such exposure in the press has had a side-effect that might have already been predicted: The press “exploits sexual exploitation” as well as any other violent story, and seldom care to debate or raise questions that would directly motivate the public sector to take serious actions.

ANDI still celebrates its victories, however, since, with the publication and airing of such stories, they manage to continuously keep the public informed that those acts happen, and more frequently than once thought.


The Populist Press


On September, 2001, Rosa Nivea Pedroso, professor of journalism at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, wrote an article defining the differences between sensational and credible presses:

“The technical and ideological procedures for editorial and commercial enjoyment of the value, the power and the status quo of information, that is, the transformation of occurrences in news, are performed both by the estimated journalists and those who work at populist and sensational papers. The difference between them is the format and the manner in which news are presented, which is recognized by receivers of those news as sensationalistic.

‘The difference between newspapers famed sensationalist and others known as serious lies only on the level. Sensationalism is only the most radical level to market information: What is sold is the appearance and, in fact, we sell news where the internal information would not develop better than the [sensationalist] headline.'” (Marcondes Filho, 1985, p.66).

According to Pedroso in 2001, populist newspapers had no chance of surviving for a long time. Similar to supermarkets gossip tabloids found regularly in the US, most of what is called in Brazil “brown press” (in juxtaposition to the “yellow press” in the US) fails after a few years in the market by losing credibility, or slowly incorporate credibility and journalistic efficiency in order to become (and compete) with larger publications.

However, soon thereafter Pedroso was proved wrong. According to Liliane Correa de Freitas, executive-editor of Here from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, a populist newspaper that competes fiercely with its larger counterpart, The State of Minas Gerais (or popularly, the EM, owned by the Associated Diaries, which also owns one of the largest Brazilian portals on the web, UAI.com), and with its competitors in the state’s market, “it is impossible to speak of sensationalism and violence/sex in the press without mentioning populist newspapers.”

In May, 2002, the newspaper Super News affiliated to its larger parent, The Times, was born to eventually grow and become the second most sold and read newspaper in the country (300 thousand daily copies sold exclusively in the street stands, only losing to São Paulo Herald by a few thousand copies). Freitas, then only a sub-editor, helped conceiving and creating the model, which would spark the creation of its main competitor in Belo Horizonte, Here. After an irrefutable offer by EM’s executive manager, Freitas has moved to their company to also help creating its populist version.

Lúcia Castro, executive-editor of The Times said that its “differential is to reach an audience that was never used to reading newspapers. The great merit of Super News”, she concluded, “is that it has created a new reading public. It has permitted the inclusion of such people [the poor, the less educated and the working classes].”

Freitas has said the same: “Our objective has always been to include these people in our societies. We have never seen it as an information consumer public, and by that they have been excluded from the democratic process of the media.

Although our stories are more sensational and we concentrate the highest percentage of our coverage on police news and sports, they still bring the public to the realization that they belong to those communities.”

Populist papers, at least those in Minas Gerais, have refused to create an editorial opinion for their Sunday issues. Instead, on a daily basis, the editorial comes from people either complaining or commending issues when before they were not even aware those issues existed, according to Freitas.

More than delivering the news, populist newspapers have arrived at a time of uncertainty for the newspaper market. As larger publications are forced to cut corners and jobs, populist newspapers are actually making money, or in the worst case scenario, helping their parent companies not to lose money.

However, there is no denying that perhaps 3 out of 5 pages of such publications are dedicated to gore, violence and sexuality on a radical level, as Pedroso explained using Filho’s own words, with vulgar or careless expressions, where popular jargons, strong imagery and perhaps some relentlessness by reporters and writers are the norm. On January, 23, one day after president Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, only a side headline mentioned the occurrence in Aqui, but the main headline read: “Uncle rapes and abuses niece for years!”

One of the tabloids that preceded the current era, the Afternoon Daily of Minas Gerais, was known for its bloody content. “When you squeezed those pages you would see blood dripping onto the floor,” said Freitas.

However, as citizens of this state are a bit more conservative than their neighbors in the southeast, the Afternoon Daily closed its doors for a lack of identification on behalf of its readers. Evidently this is not the case of the populist newspapers, which have succeeded in forcing, as Castro said, some people to learn how to read and write in order to be informed by the medium that all of their friends and co-workers are reading.

As Freitas said, “[readers] in this state don’t care how much blood spilt on the scene, or how much the victim suffered before dying, but they do wish to know exactly when, where and how the crime was committed in the most sordid details.”

Rosa Nivea Pedroso explained, back in 2001, that “the populist newspaper is sold by its headlines, which are capable of making readers read and buy only for the attraction, the sensation, the impact and morbid curiosity awakened.”

Freitas does not disagree. According to her experience, violence and sex simply sell, not only to the poorest and under-educated, but to anyone in Brazil. “In fact, not only the poor an uneducated buy these papers,” said Freitas, “but pretty much anyone from any layer of society, perhaps with the exclusion of the very rich.” Since the poorest and under-educated have been left out of the loop for such a long time, it is no wonder that they are more attracted to what has been the pillar of “brown journalism” in Brazil, “but everyone else is,” Freitas complemented.

There are, nonetheless, media analysts who argue vehemently with such affirmation. As the Press Observatory, a NGO specialized in tracking media trends, efficiency and social accountability, published in an article written by Luciano Martins Costa in April, 2009, “an analysis of the main titles created or renewed in order to expand the breath of their parent journalistic companies shows that editors’ choices repeat older beliefs that dictated that the public of those newspapers considered less “noble” likes the screaming colors, scandalous titles and, nearly always, bloody news [better than the “noble” public].” At least this is the case, as the study have showed, for most editors, who envision that violence and sex not only sell, but sell even better to the lower and middle classes.

In fact, Press Observatory works closely with the website Cruel Brazil, which publishes daily accounts of the number of violent stories exposed by the media.

As Costa concluded in his April article, “São Paulo Herald has published [in the 17th of that month] that the Justice Tribunal has forbidden the exposition of accident victims in newspaper or television reports. Of course,” Costa continued, “the National Association of Newspapers condemned the decision (…) but it suffices to observe the titles of publications such as The Liberal, Pará’s Diary and Amazon to understand the judges' reason.” Such publications publish daily pictures of torn-out, smothered bodies, even of minors, as stimulus to sell newspapers. And the question remains controversial: Is violence more likely to attract the poorest and under-educated, or as Freitas has argued, it is well sold to anyone in society (perhaps excluding the very richest)?

Costa concluded that such extreme and absurd expositions, and the fact that the National Association of Newspapers has condemned the Justice Tribunal’s attempt to reduce such exploitation, are signs that the Brazilian press is “ill, very ill.”