The World Cup of Lazy Journalism
Autor: Manoela Campos | Publicado: 2014-06-17T18:29:00-07:00

While finishing up a news story for my current employer, a foreign 
news agency emailed me asking if any vehicles were on fire because of 
that days’ bus strike.
 They’d seen footage from the last time the citizens of Rio made their 
feelings known and were looking for something in a similar shade of 
Angry Violent Brazilian. They didn’t mention the middle class workers 
who couldn’t afford their basic needs and focused on large things 
burning because, of course, “that’s what makes good TV.”

Though I couldn’t see anything on fire from my Copacabana hotel room,
 I checked some local sources to see if there was anything with wheels 
being burned anywhere and found that on this night, the protesters of 
Rio were keeping their anger to themselves.

When
 I relayed to the foreign (let’s call it American) news agency that 
nothing relevant was on fire, but that I could probably get them an 
intimate portrait of one of the bus drivers on strike, the emails 
stopped. No carnage, no story.

As someone who only gets paid when someone buys the stories I’m 
selling, I thought about writing them back and pitching something using 
buzzwords like “favela violence” or “police shot/killed…” or simply 
“FAVELA!!!”, but I thought it best to finish the work I was currently 
being paid for.

Talking to journalists throughout Brazil these last few weeks of 
covering the buildup to the World Cup, the one thing they all say is 
that the only stories editors across the world are interested in fall 
into the Angry Violent Brazilian Who Might Mess Up The World Cup 
category, or what can only be described as “poverty porn.” Camera people
 who are based here say the same thing–everyone wants shots of people 
being poor in the favelas and/or angry young people in masks and 
headscarfs. They are filming the exact same story over and over, just in
 different languages.

Every journalist talked with regret and helplessness. There are 
stories here with more depth that deserve to be told, but that’s not 
what’s selling.

I’m
 not immune to this formula. I’ve interviewed several protesters, 
strikers and people simply upset with the Brazilian government. As I’m 
here to cover World Cup-related stories, I pushed them to mold their 
experience to the World Cup, even if all they really wanted to talk 
about was wondering how they were going to feed their kid the next day.

One journalist said the reason it’s like this is because television 
news feels it’s competing with reality television. If a majority of the 
country had to choose between a thoughtful profile of a family from 
another country trying to make ends meet and a faux-famous family on a 
luxury vacation, apparently they’ll always choose the latter.

But that’s not my taste and it doesn’t seem to be the taste of the 
journalists I spoke to. But are we the audience? Apparently not. News 
agencies and TV networks seem to only care about whether males aged 25 
to 49 are going to look up from their iPhone for a few minutes and they 
believe the only way that’s going to happen is if something’s on fire or
 more importantly, something “could” potentially be on fire.

Has the media trained the viewing public or is this what the viewing 
public really wants? If all the news outlets decided to stop focusing on
 scaring us and turned their attention to a well-rounded, moderate 
telling of the facts, would the soccer moms in Iowa revolt?

The
 truth is that while of course there are some terrible things happening 
in some of the hundreds of favelas in Rio and there have been necessary 
protests and there are threats of more, there are many, many more 
stories that can and should be told. For example, the Asa Branca
 favela is the happiest place I’ve been to in Rio yet it’s three&nbsp;decades
 of remarkable architectural progress is being threatened by wealthy 
developers. The recently evicted residents of the former Telerj complex I spoke to turned down the offer of Bolsa Família, Brazil’s cash transfer welfare program, because they didn’t want a handout, they just want a roof over their heads. And in Maré, the site of the latest police occupation, there is inspiring community organizing and engaging public security debates happening.

Would
 people around the world care about these stories? Isn’t part of our job
 to educate? When you look at the accompanying photo what do you see? Do
 the words “slum”
 or “poverty” come to mind? Or do you see history and culture and what 
can only be viewed&nbsp;as a remarkable architectural achievement?

Fear and sensationalism are easy to produce. Stories with depth take 
time. Take time to make. Take time to watch. News agencies want 15 
seconds of a bus on fire, 10 seconds of someone yelling angrily into a 
camera, and a five second quote to put fear into World Cup tourists.

All of us–journalists, editors, and those with the remotes in our 
hands–owe it to the people on the ground and to ourselves to do much 
better.

By  Lawrence Charles

 http://www.rioonwatch.org/?p=15952