Press
The price of collusion
Thesis points out the level of collaborationism of
journalists with the military dictatorship
Carlos Lemes Pereira
The bonfire of vanities around which a considerable portion of the tribe of Brazilian journalists still dances is threatened by a storm: Watchdogs: journalists and censors, from AI-5 to the 1988 Constitution, doctoral thesis by Rio historian Beatriz Kushnir, 35 years, approved with honors at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp, in October last year, demystifies the dogma according to which newspaper editorial offices were, invariably, barricaded against the military dictatorship and that the majority of their professionals were on the front line of the fight for human rights – including freedom of expression.
“I myself believed in this myth, so cultivated in our media. So much so that the initial aim of my work was limited to dissecting the modus operandi of censorship in those exceptional years. But, as I furthered my research, I came across the high level of collaboration between newsrooms at the time and the regime”, says Beatriz, without disguising her tone of disenchantment. However, an even healthy break in illusion, in the case of a country that is always faced with the uncomfortable need to rectify the records of its past.
Not that, absolutely, there was a lack of heroism in the clash between journalism and dictatorship. However, posing the question again, the historian's work locates the pockets of resistance in the so-called alternative press. Or “runt”. In the mainstream press – the “newspapers”, as they were pejoratively labeled – submission (or even ideological adherence, why not?) was so blatant that there were few outlets that needed to have the full-time presence of a censor in the newsrooms. In fact, the first professional training of several censors was precisely that of journalist.
Equally impactful for Beatriz was the discovery of career police officers who were assigned to work as journalists. True “watchdogs” of the dictatorship unleashed in the buzz of newsrooms. Thus, thanks to this multiplicity of resources, he was criticized both for the brucutu style, the cutting of what “could not be written”, and for the more subtle stratagem of the act of writing itself. Scripture of the convenience of the despots on duty, of course.
Funded by Fapesp with a four and a half year scholarship, the researcher began her doctorate in 1996. Although the initial chapters deal with censorship since the Proclamation of the Republic, the main road to the rocks was the vast documentation from the Department of Censorship of Public Entertainments of the Federal Police, at the National Archives, in Brasília. It was guided by this paperwork that the historian reached the 11 censors who provided the essential interviews for an academic work to accumulate such explosive content.
First scare – “As soon as I started investigating who the legendary censors of the time were, I was shocked to bump into ten journalists straight away, just in the first group of names raised”, remembers Beatriz. Of the team of 11 interviewed, very few authorized the disclosure of their real identities. Most are referred to by fictitious names. Explain: many are still employees of public security bodies, or – what is more embarrassing – are properly “acclimatized” in the journalistic environment.
One of those who didn't mind having his real name revealed is Coriolano de Loyola Cabral Fagundes, currently an evangelical pastor. During the Sarney government (1985/1990), Fagundes headed the Public Entertainment Censorship Department and ended up occupying a place at the epicenter of the episode that precipitated the collapse of censorship: the veto of the film Je Vous Salue Marie, by Jean-Luc Godard. In the wake of the controversy that the case aroused, with protest demonstrations popping up everywhere, the then Minister of Justice, Fernando Lyra, saw his position drain down the drain that was beginning to swallow up the authoritarian rubble of a regime that was no longer sustainable.
Difficult digestion
With bombastic revelations, but always rigorously based on scientific research, one wonders why the 437 pages of Beatriz Kushnir's thesis have not yet attracted the interest of the publishing market. She does not rule out the possibility that there are corporatist barriers to this whole hornet's nest being expanded into a commercial book. “If a publisher's reviewer is a 'newspaper man', it will be difficult to digest the thesis.” And she quotes a prominent personality from the journalistic world itself: “As Jânio de Freitas reflected, in an article in Folha de S.Paulo, on the occasion of AI-30's 5th anniversary, journalists are the ones who still tell their stories”.
Beatriz adds that she is already considering looking for university publishers to publish Watchdogs. The doors of private publishers were not always closed to the historian, however. Imago recently published Perfis Cruzados – trajectories and political activism in Brazil, in which Beatriz brings together articles by researchers, activists and – yes! – journalists, in a reconstruction of the various fronts of resistance that the dictatorship faced.
