23/09/2007

Shots fired at the journalist

By Mário Magalhães
ombudsman@uol.com.br

On June 2, 1976, a few weeks before turning 48, American journalist Don Bolles started the ignition of his car in Phoenix. A bomb exploded and 11 days later, these injuries caused the death of the reporter for the "Arizona Republic." He investigated organized crime, and his death was probably ordered by organized crime.

In an unprecedented reaction that has never been repeated in the United States, 38 journalists from 28 newspapers and TV networks got together to form the so-called "Arizona project" in which they took over and expanded on the work being performed into fraud in land deals by their slain colleague.

That is exactly what they did: while they were seeking information and demanding that authorities find out about the homicide, they concentrated on uncovering the fraud. Their message: if one journalist was killed, many others would look more profoundly into the hidden facts which had cost a life.

The participants produced a series of reports, recognized by numerous journalism awards.

In the early evening Wednesday one of the most respected Brazilian journalists, Amaury Ribeiro Jr., 44, was in a bar in Cidade Ocidental, in Goias state, in the region known as outlying Brasília, near the capital.

An adolescent armed with a 38-caliber revolver entered and charged toward the reporter. Ribeiro Jr. jumped on the aggressor, but one of the two bullets he fired punctured him in the belly. Until the day before yesterday he was alive and anxious to return to work, but he remained in the hospital. The gunman fled.

The work that the journalist was doing in recent weeks at the Brasília daily "Correio Braziliense" was an in-depth look at violence in the region surrounding the capital.

In a look back over the previous six months, published on Sept. 4, Ribeiro Jr. reported that 41 youths between age 13 and 18 and more than 109 between age 19 and 26 had been murdered in the region. The total was 150. In most cases, the suspects are drug traffickers.

That was the prelude to a series of stories. The repercussion was so potent that the government announced it was sending in the National Security Force.

Through Friday, indications suggested that the attempted murder was an attack against journalism, an act of reprisal for revealing crimes and criminals. Ribeiro wrote in Correio": "In their battles with rival gangs, bandits force youths who use merla (a cocaine derivative), in debt due to their addiction, to work as gunmen for the traffickers."

Groups in Brazil and outside the country described the episode as a move against freedom of the press and demanded that authorities punish those responsible.

Editorials and protests are fair and welcome. This, however, is not the most relevant role for journalism. Finding those responsible for trying to kill the reporter is pressing, but the duty, in essence, is that of the police. Carrying out justice is a prerogative of the Justice Department.

There is public interest in reporting the barbarity in force so close to the seat of power. Municipalities in the surrounding area are among the most violent in the country. They are sinking into social degradation that is hardened by poverty and drugs.

The attack on a journalist who was dedicated to exposing this tragedy is also an attempt to silence journalism. It should be confronted with more stories, even without a task force like in 1976.

The press fulfills its role when it oversees power, whether a figure in the Senate or an exterminator in outlying areas. It is journalism that must respond to physical aggression against journalists by monitoring and discomforting those who have motives to do this.

Annotations about corporatism

The attack Wednesday revived a heated debate from five years earlier: does corporatism result in disproportional attention to crimes against journalists?

In 2002, reporter Tim Lopes of TV Glob was killed by traffickers. His murder was the object of vast media interest leading to the arrest of the executioners.

In 2005, Liz Antonio Riff wrote in the now-defunct site www.nominimo.com.br a story that won the Lorenzo Natal Prize in the European Union. It told the story of a citizen killed "the same night, the same way, executed by the same group (who killed Tim Lopes)."

The information coincided with the disappearance of a poor metalworker. Bones were discovered, but three years later there has not been a DNA test to identify them. In this case, the police did not even launch another inquiry.

According to the dictionary, corporatism is the "action (labor, political) in which the defense of interests or privileges in an organized sector of society prevails, in detriment to the public interest."

Comparing the news about the two deaths (almost nothing has been reported about the metalworker), Ryff, now a professor of journalism at the Catholic Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro, commented:

"Journalism really is a little corporatist around the world. But an artist would also be highlighted. Journalists have a predilection for symbolic cases. There is not enough time or paper to cover every death. The difference is between those who have a voice in the press and those who don't."

I agree and annotate: there is undeniable public interest in covering attacks against journalists, Amaury Ribeiro Jr. reported about the ominous reality for residents in the area around the capital, just like Tim Lopes in the Complexo do Alemão neighborhood near Rio.

Translation by John Wright