1. “The role of commercial broadcasting and
journalism in Brazil”
University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Carolina Matos
Government Department
University of Essex
E-mail: cmatos@essex.ac.uk

2. Core readings
• Canizalez, Andres and Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2008) “Beyond National
Media Systems: A Media for Latin America and the Struggle for
Integration” in The Media in Latin America, Berkshire: Open
University Press, 209-223
• Matos, C. (2012) Media and politics in Latin America: globalization,
democracy and identity, London: I.B. Tauris
• …….., C. (2008) “Media and Democracy in Brazil: towards a
“realistic” settlement” in Journalism and political democracy in Brazil,
Maryland: Lexington
• Guedes-Bailey, Olga and Jambeiro Barbosa, Othon F. (2008) “The
media in Brazil: a historical overview of Brazilian broadcasting
politics” in The Media in Latin America, Open University Press, 46-
61
• Sinclair, John (1999) Latin America Television: a global view,
Oxford: Oxford University Press

3. Key points
• Brazilian media: from the dictatorship to the
contemporary years
• Journalism and political democracy in Brazil
• Latin American broadcasting has adopted US
model
• Commercial television and national identity
• The case of TV Globo
• The objectivity and professionalism debate
• Political journalism and patterns of reporting
• The role of the Brazilian journalist in the re-
democratization process

4. Daily newspapers and weekly magazines
Newspapers (500)
Folha de Sao Paulo (413.000 in
2001)
Estado de Sao Paulo (364.000)
Extra (307.500)
O Dia (249.900)
Jornal do Brasil (120.000)
Magazines (1.485)
* Veja (1,1 million)
* Playboy (442.200)
* Claudia (439.200)
* Superinteressante (380.700)
* Isto E (372.700)
* Exame (181.300)

5. Broadcasters and online media
Television
(281 stations in 2001)
TV Globo
SBT
Record
Rede TV!
CNT
Online media
(14 million Internet users)
Uol, AOL, IG, Globo.com
Cable television
Net Brasil & TVA
Satellite
Sky 7 DirecTV

6. Journalism and Political Democracy in Brazil
• Historical and political context of Brazil: military dictatorship
(1964-1985) imposed censorship and control on the press;
fascist-inclined regime
• Media were divided in regards to the opening of the regime
• Certain sectors pressured for advancement (i.e. Folha in
Direct Elections Campaign in 1984 versus resistance of TV
Globo)
• Four case studies of political and presidential elections
campaigns since 1984, with the 2002 presidential elections
consolidating political democracy
• Conclusions pointed out to complex role of the markets in re-
democratization and to the transformation of the role of the
state since the dictatorship period (from authoritarianism to
social-democracy)

7. The media and the state, the market, civil
society and journalism (Matos,2008)
• A “free” market press - the market functioned as a
liberating and oppressive force at the same time – Limits
where placed on the increase of public debate due to
media concentration and excessive commercialization
• The state – oppressive or vehicle for social and economic
inclusion?
• Civil society – negotiation with the market forces, the
state and the media
• Journalism – shaped by various forces (state, market and
public opinion)
• Problems to tackle:
• - Strengthening of a complex media system with multiple
journalism identities

8. The Brazilian media system during the dictatorship
• Authoritarian regimes in Latin America
• Brazilian media (1964-1985):
a) Militant journalism and resistance in the
alternative media
b) Era of “enlightened” debate?
c) Alignments of the mainstream media
versus resistance of certain journalists and
newspapers during specific periods

9. Brazilian media today
• Journalism of the 1990’s – Blurring of the
boundaries between newsrooms and commercial
departments
• The expansion of professionalism and objectivity
• The decline of partisanship and militant journalism
- romantic journalism of the 1970’s versus
pragmatism of the 1990’s.
• Decade of the 90’s - multiple journalism identities
proliferated in the newsrooms
• Period saw an increase of public debate as well as a
decline of a more intellectual public sphere
• Rise of watchdog journalism and investigative
reporting as a contemporary genre of the 1990’s
(Waisbord, 2000)

10. Latin American broadcasting has adopted US model
• TV in many Latin American countries has developed following
the US commercial model
• I.e. Development of Brazilian television by military planners
in the 60’s onwards contributed for the formation of what
Straubhaar (2001; 138) has defined as the “nationalizing
vocation”
• It also contributed for the creation of a consumer culture and
for the engagement of Brazilians in the market economy.
• Television has taken on a central role in political life, in the
country’s democratisation process and in the construction of
various identities.
• It is possible to say that in this sense TV Globo carries some
resemblance with the role played by the BBC in the UK.

11. Commercial Brazilian television in an international
perspective
• Global media organisations outside North America and Europe, like TVB
from Hong Kong, TV Globo (Brazil), Televisa (Mexico) and All-Arab
Television (Egypt), who target mainly a national market, can first
dominate the local or national domain, then they can export programs and
technology as well as shape satellite channels in larger global markets.
• These patterns of reverse flows between the First and Third World
countries have been defined by various scholars (i.e. Giddens in
Curran, 2000) as being a reverse type of colonization or reverse
cultural imperialism. Examples include the export of Brazilian
telenovelas to Portugal.
• Although Brazil’s Globo TV has managed to reverse some of the
flows from ‘Third’ to ‘First’ World countries through the exportation
of successful soap-opera programmes, the fact of the matter is that
the station is a large media company that has been heavily
influenced by American commercial formats.

12. Commercial television and national identity
• The power that TV Globo has had in shaping national identity and
the political agenda of Brazil stands as one of the key reasons for the
governmental initiatives and civil society pressures for investments
in the fortification of the public media.
• Since its origins, Brazil has been multiracial and has been
supported on the interplay of cultures and on racial miscegenation.
It has been classified by Lauerhass Jr. (2006, 6) as ‘a Creole variant
of a European (Portuguese) culture’.
• As Voltmer and Schmitt-Beck (2006, 231) have asserted, the
excessive commercialisation of the media in Latin America’s new
democracies, which has also been influenced by the heavy
entertainment diet provided by commercial broadcasting, can be
seen as having constituted an obstacle in the process of institution-
building and successful democratic consolidation in the continent
(Skidmore, 1993; Waisbord, 1995 in Voltmer and Schmitt-Beck,
2006).

13. Commercial television and national identity
• Various studies have dissected the close ties for instance
established between TV Globo in its early years with the dictatorship
(i.e. Straubhaar, 2001; Fox, 1997). The military government was
seen as having been interventionist in the media during the
dictatorship years, financing microwave, satellite and other aspects
of TV infra-structure, and favouring in particular TV Globo.
• Television has without a doubt always had a growing importance in
political campaigns in Latin America and in Brazil. TV Globo from
Brazil is considered one of the most powerful and dynamic actors in
today’s global connections (Waisbord, 1995) alongside Mexico’s
Televisa.
• TV Globo and Televisa have managed to emerge as the two largest
broadcasters located outside of the developed world which offer
global competition to the Northern players. Both Globo, with annual
revenue of US$ 1.9 billion, and Televisa, with US$ 1.4 billion, could
fall within the range of the ‘Top 25 Media Groups’ of 1997, as they
were ranked by the trade journal Broadcasting and Cable (Higgins
and McClellan, 1997, quoted in Sinclair, 1999, 74).

14. Television and national identity in Brazil
• Television to start with has occupied a central role in political life, in the
country’s democratization process and in the construction of various
identities.
• Considered to be one of the fourth largest in the world according to
common knowledge (Straubhaar, 2001), significant research has been
done on TV Globo and its role in assisting in identity construction
(Porto, 2007; Straubhaar, 2001; Sinclair; 1999).
• Television has had the power in setting standards of conduct,
influencing lifestyles, selling products and ideas and shaping behaviours
and identities.
• Various studies (i.e. Hamburger, 2005; Mattelart and Mattelart, 1990;
Porto, 2008, 3) have also shown how telenovelas have been able to
generate a ‘unified national public space’, providing audiences with texts
that ‘cut across regional, class and other social boundaries’.
• As Possebon (2006) further affirms, according to the Pesquisa Nacional
de Amostragem de Domicilios of the 2005 IBGE census, 91.4% of
Brazilian homes have television. The channels TV Globo and SBT reach
more than 95% of the homes.

15. TV Globo and its role in democratization
• Commercial television in Brazil has had a major role in selling not
only cultural goods and ideas, but in shaping lifestyle and
consumerism habits and behaviours of large sectors of the
population independently of class, ethnicity and race.
• It has also played a significant role in defining national politics and
in obstructing, as well as contradictorily assisting, in the
construction of the democratization project following the end of the
dictatorship in 1985 (Matos, 2008; Bucci, 2001; Conti, 1999).
• TV Globo has the largest percentage of national content production
in comparison to its competitors, including an average of 70% and
100% during peak time (Possebon, 2007, 289).
• Brazilian commercial television has thus managed to be at the same
time wholly praised due to the quality of is telenovelas, mini-series,
professionalism of actors and visual imagery whilst also having
being much criticised for its coverage of politics and its history of
lack of balance in the reporting of election campaigns and treatment
of left-wing politics.
•

16. The role of soap-operas in democratization
• Due to TV Globo’s relationship with the dictatorship regime in its
early years, there has been controversies in regards to the role that
the station’s soap-operas have played in providing avenues for
political liberalisation during the 1980s (Porto, 2008; Straubhaar,
1988).
• Straubhaar (1988) has argued for instance that Brazilian soaps
contributed to delay support for political opening, whereas Porto
(2008, 10) points to the ambiguity of the telenovelas’ texts.
• Porto (2008) correctly believes that there is (and has been) a role
for television fiction in the process of nation-building
• Porto (2008) argues that they helped to give meaning and to shape
the political process by incorporating new demands coming from a
more organised civil society. He underlined the work of authors
such as Dias Gomes, and soaps like O Bem Amado (The Well Loved,
1973) and Roque Santeiro (1985), as being emblematic of such
actions.

17. The case of TV Globo
• TV Globo’s wider commitment to representing balanced political
debate has grown as a response to the critiques that it received in
relation to its coverage of the key presidential elections of the post-
dictatorship phase (i.e. Bucci, 2000; Skidmore, 1993; Fox, 1997).
• From the mid-1990s onwards, it started to be pressured to improve
its journalism and balance criterias, at the same time that it began
to suffer from competition posed by other television stations, cable
TV and the Internet.
• Former director of journalism of TV Cultura, Gabriel Priolli,
president of the Brazilian Association of University TVs (ABTV), has
argued that Brazilian commercial television has played a powerful
role in the diffusion of the national Brazilian sentiment, largely
identified with the white Rio and Sao Paulo elites.
• TV Globo’s telenovelas have undoubtedly also had a large role in the
building of this unifying national identity. Many have argued that a
highly commercial entertainment and advertising diet has
encouraged the development of a particular individualistic and
consumerist personality.

18. TV Globo’s popular programmes
• Many sectors of the Brazilian audience continue to rate soaps
highly, including them among their favourite programming,
alongside Jornal Nacional. TV Globo on the other hand has also
tried to respond better to criticism, and has began also to market
itself as producing culture.
• This is evident in its more recent slogan, “Cultura, a gente se ve por
ai” (Culture: we will see each other around).
• With an average of 40 points daily nonetheless, Globo’s Jornal
Nacional is still the highest audience rating in Brazilian TV
(Meditsch, Moreira and Machado, 2005).
• TV Globo’s popularity has however been in decline. In April 2010,
the station registered the lowest average audience rating in a
decade, of 16.8 points per day. Ibope also detected a decline of
interest in open television in general, attributing this to various
reasons including the type of programming, growth of the Internet,
access to DVDs as well as competition from other leisure activities.

19. Quotes from interviews
“Open television has been incapable of developing relevant
themes or even to use national values, like music, to assist in
constructing a national identity. The ways in which we can
improve the quality of Brazilian television is to oblige them to
include a quota for local production..... The issue is mainly to
make room for wider competition, allowing the entry of new
players. It is a market in which the only real competitors are
Globo and Record, with the latter trying to imitate Globo’s
model. The only way to break this mediocrity pact is to open
spaces for new players...”

(Journalist Luis Nassif, former FSP columnist and
presenter of the TV Brasil debating programme
Brasilianas.org)

20. The debate on objectivity and balance in journalism:
historical perspectives (in Matos, 2008)
• According to US historians, journalists and academics
(Waisbord, 2002; Tumber, 1999; Schudson, 1978), a
more sophisticated reading of the ideal of objectivity
gained strengthen amongst American journalists
because of their..questioning of their own subjectivity.
• Objectivity was also seen as vital for publishers and
their needs to move away from highly politicized
publications.... It also began to be considered a
necessity by journalists who wanted their work to be
taken seriously... Tumber, 1999; Merritt, 1995;
Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1972)
• Model of “information” and factual journalism...was
mainly represented by the success of the New York
Times since the 1890’s.

21. The objectivity dilemma (in Matos, 2008)
• Critics have argued how objectivity serves as a defense system for
journalists and news organizations to repudiate charges of bias
(Tuchman, 1972, 1999).
• Tuchman (1972) has stated that professional norms produce stories
that support the existing order. She has examined the newsman’s
notion of objectivity by focusing on some standard journalism
practices, such as the presentation of all sides of a story during a
period of time (the balance criteria)
• As Hackett and Zhao (1998, 88) state, the objectivity regime
persists precisely because “it does offer openings, however unequal,
to different social and cultural groups”.
• Critiques blame decline of public life on journalism
• - Decrease in interest runs deeper (I.e. decline of modernism,
growth of cynicism, relativism, individualism, etc).

22. Political journalism as an avenue for debate: from the direct
elections to 2002
• Due to the shift from the powers of the state to those of the market
in the late 1980’s, there was a transition from forms of political
constraints to economic motives.
• FSP columnist Janio de Freitas has argued that political power in
Brazil has learned to live better with press liberty than business has:
• “Journalism is an exercise which is badly tolerated by the
economic and social power.., including the political power. I think
also that the political power has been more affected by press
liberty, but it is the one which has learned to live with journalism
better. The economic power does not tolerate this…”.
• I.e. Concerns of the business world regarding how ‘the market’
would react to the possibility of the PT being sworn into power in
1994 and in 2002, and the type of political decisions which could be
made because of this, such as an abandonment of the privatisation
programme, the rise of the minimum wage or the reluctance in
signing a deal with the IMF imposed constraints on the coverage

23. Political journalism as an avenue for debate: from the
direct elections to 2002
• Similarly to Janio, Nassif is critical of the economic orthodoxy that
marked the decade of the 1990’s:
• “After 94/95, you see how financial journalism has been subordinated to
the clichés of the market in a scandalous form. Who are the winners of this
model, which was in place mainly from 1994 and 1998, but which
continues? It is a model of globalisation with social exclusion…When
some journalists went to ask questions to Gustavo Franco (former
president of the Central Bank) in a seminar in Rio, the answer was that the
market does not allow it…how do you construct such a model of
subordination of the country to the market?”
• If on one hand the market functioned as a liberating force in the
post-dictatorship period, guaranteeing wider press freedom and
exercising the watchdog role, on the other hand it also imposed
limits on the consolidation of political democracy and on the wider
democratisation of Brazilian society

24. Patterns of political reporting post-1994
• The early 1990’s were years of struggle for both political and economic
stability. This decade saw a strengthening of the role of the presidency,
with high expectations being placed by the population on individual
politicians and presidents regarding the chances that they could actually
reduce social inequality levels and boost economic growth.
• The result was the formation of a pattern of political reporting which
favoured direct tug-of-wars between candidates, reflecting aspects of
Brazilian culture with its cult of personalism and authority figures (Da
Matta, 1979).
• The content and critical textual analysis conducted in my first research
(Matos, 2008) showed that, similar to 1989, the 1994 elections were
“individualized” around the personalities, personal ambitions and qualities
of the main candidates. This was the case in relation to the two main
political players of the 1990’s (Lula and Cardoso), who sometimes had
their personalities more subjected to debate by the media than their
political and economic programmes.

25. Role of the Brazilian journalist in the re-
democratization process
• The Brazilian journalist has played a contradictory role in the whole re-
democratization process, from the direct elections campaigns of 1985 until
the 2002 elections of Lula
• Multiple journalism identities have proliferated in the newsrooms, from a
social responsibility ethos to professionalism and militancy
• Brazilian political journalism has also been marked by ambiguity, having
reinforced professional journalistic standards as well as maintained
partisan practices
• Period has not seen a linear progress – there were some media
improvements in the aftermath of the dictatorship, but genuine media
democratization has not been achieved
• This is why there are still main pressures placed by civil society players,
academics and journalists for the advancement of media reforms and
regulation policies