Abstract
The impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 was the result of a coup of the economically dominant conservative oligarchy against the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, the Worker’s Party), in power since 2003. The right wing Brazilian media played a crucial role in this coup by manipulating public opinion as well as the politicians who voted against Dilma. In particular, the media of the powerful Globo Corporation, such as O Globo newspaper, and especially Globo’s Jornal Nacional, the pervasive TV news program, systematically demonized and delegitimized Dilma, as well as ex-President Lula and the PT, in their news reports and editorials by selectively associating them with pervasive corruption and attributing the serious economic recession to them. After a summary of this sociopolitical context, and a brief theoretical definition of manipulation, this article examines some of the manipulative strategies of O Globo’s editorials during March and April 2016.
Introduction
On 31 August 2016, the Brazilian Senate voted President Dilma Rousseff out of office because she had allegedly adjusted the national budget through ‘illegal’ financial operations. This impeachment followed months of acrimonious national debate in the mass media and on the Internet, as well as in the lower House of Parliament (the Câmara de Deputados). After 8 years of the successful presidency (2003–2010) of her world-famous predecessor Lula and 4 years of her own administration, Rousseff was re-elected in 2014 with a slight majority but with a general approval rating of 60%.
How was it that in 2016 not only had this approval rating lowered dramatically, but also more than two-thirds of both Houses of Parliament decided to accuse and condemn her for a financial practice that was common among her predecessors?
In this article, we show that this impeachment was the result of massive manipulation by Globo, the largest media corporation in the country and the voice of the conservative middle class, and more generally of the economically dominant right wing oligarchy and its neoliberal agenda threatening the advancement of social rights in the young democracy of the country. This media manipulation is (a crucial) part (in controlling public opinion) of a much more complex political and legal campaign involving several institutions, such as conservative parties, both Houses of Parliament, the Federal Police (FP) and the Supreme Court (see e.g. Souza, 2016).
Together with other conservative newspapers and magazines, O Globo newspaper, especially Globo’s Network Jornal Nacional (JN), the pervasive evening TV news program, since 2010 had dramatically increased their earlier (2005) attacks against Lula, Dilma and the governing Worker’s Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT; see also Souza, 2011). The media selectively blamed them for the worst economic crisis in decades and accused them of corruption, for instance in connection with the national oil company Petrobras.
This media campaign, exacerbating general discontent about widespread political corruption and right wing resentment against the leftist coalition government led by the PT, in March 2016 instigated huge demonstrations by the conservative middle class. In this sociopolitical context, parliament used President Rousseff’s financial operations as a pretext to end 13 years of PT power, and thereby the important social agenda of the Left.
While it is hardly surprising that conservative media criticize a left wing government and president, a systematic analysis of the editorials of O Globo newspaper (henceforth Globo) in March and April 2016 shows that public opinion and protest, and the ensuing political decision-making, were systematically manipulated by biased coverage and misrepresentation. We shall show this after a summary of the theory of manipulation within the broader framework of our multidisciplinary, sociocognitive approach in Critical Discourse Studies.
Limitations
There are many things that, unfortunately, this article does not offer. First of all, we merely provide a summary of some theoretical properties of manipulation and not a new theory or a review of earlier research on manipulation – which would require a book-length study. Second, in order to understand the Globo editorials, a more extensive section would be needed about the sociopolitical context in Brazil, as well as about the Brazilian mass media, especially the Globo Corporation. Third, a complete analysis of the editorials is impossible within the space of a single article, so we merely focus on a few typical manipulative strategies as used in the Globo editorials.
The sociopolitical context in Brazil
The impeachment of President Rousseff (generally called by her first name, Dilma, as is the custom in Brazil for politicians and other famous people) should be analyzed within a complex sociopolitical context of polarization between the Left, led by the PT, and the Right, led by the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), whose candidate, Aécio Neves, had lost the 2010 elections against Dilma (for analysis of this recent sociopolitical context of the impeachment, see e.g. Jinkings et al., 2016; Souza, 2016; for more general political background, see e.g. Hunter, 2010; Power, 2000).
Since the election of former President Lula in 2002, and his re-election in 2006 until today, the Brazilian Right in general, and the media in particular, have sought to delegitimize him as well as his PT (the Worker’s Party), despite their spectacular, internationally renowned successes in the fight against poverty, such as the Bolsa Familia and the Minha Casa policies. This opposition was further exacerbated with the election of his successor Dilma Rousseff in 2010, and especially with her re-election in 2014, when she (barely) won against opposition candidate Aécio Neves of the PSDB.
The progressive policies of the PT and allied parties contributed to curbing the poverty of millions of Brazilians and furthered the international fame of Lula, reason enough for the resentment of conservative, neoliberal parties, politicians and media (see Hunter, 2010). Moreover, in 2005, the PT – as well as other parties – was involved in the Mensalão scandal, a corruption scheme to buy votes in favor of government legislation – although it was never proved that the money actually did buy votes. Although other parties were also involved in the Mensalão scandal, the media selectively focused on the PT and its politicians, as well as on Lula himself.
The vehemence of the editorials and the bias of the news reports of the Globo newspaper in 2016 should not simply be explained in terms of the ideological or partisan opposition between the Right and the Left. In many ways, the discourse of the Right, also in the media, shows a profound hatred of Lula, because he was the personal symbol of the PT as the political enemy or because of his international fame and his successful social programs. As we shall also show in our discourse analysis, in addition there is a question of profound class resentment in a country in which class inequality is particularly profound and resilient. Lula has always been seen by the conservative (white) elites as the lower-class metallurgical worker who in the 2002 elections finally managed to defeat the PSDB, whose candidate, Aécio Neves, governor of the state of Minas Gerais, lost the election again to Dilma in 2014.
During the presidency of Dilma Rousseff, history repeated itself with a vengeance in an even more gigantic corruption scandal (sometimes called the petrolão), involving the national oil company, Petrobras, as well as other large companies, such as the gigantic construction company Odebrecht, accused of paying bribes to political parties and politicians. The prosecution of this corruption scandal, called Lava Jato (Car Wash), was (and still is) a huge operation, leading to the accusation (and some convictions) of many famous business people as well as politicians of several parties (see the detailed Wikipedia entry about Lava Jato). Again, both the prosecutors, especially judge Sérgio Moro, in the southern city of Curitiba, the center of the Lava Jato operation, as well as the media, focused especially on the PT and Lula. Dilma herself, a former president of the Petrobras company, was never formally accused of corruption, but the media still routinely associated her with the scandal and repeatedly accused her (and Lula) of obstructing the official Lava Jato operation.
Thanks in particular to the massive media coverage of these major scandals, public opinion was already very negative about generalized corruption in Brazil, especially about politicians, and more specifically the PT, despite the continuing popularity of Lula and Dilma among millions of Brazilians. At the same time, in 2015 the international economic crisis also came to be felt in Brazil, and the economic and financial situation of the country quickly deteriorated as a consequence of lower oil prices, inflation and errors in economic policies. This further contributed to a general atmosphere of crisis, including rising prices, increasing unemployment, and other social and financial consequences affecting large sectors of the population.
It is against this complex background that the Right and its media in 2015 and 2016 saw an opportunity to finally break the power of the PT and to impeach Dilma Rousseff by accusing her of pedaladas, financial schemes, such as ‘illegal’ loans from the Central Bank, to finance her social programs despite a dramatically lower national budget. Although earlier conservative governments had used similar schemes, in this case a majority of politicians took the opportunity to accuse the president of the ‘crime of responsibility’, one of the formal conditions of impeachment in Brazil, which is a presidential democracy. When in March 2016 her coalition partner, the ever fickle Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), and her Vice-President, Michel Temer (PMDB), left the government, enough votes could be marshaled to begin the impeachment procedure in the Câmara de Deputados, the lower House of Parliament. The powerful, manipulating president of the Câmara, Eduardo Cunha (PMDB), himself accused of corruption and money laundering, had become the main enemy of the president after the PT did not prevent accusations against Cunha in the parliamentary Ethics Commission.
One of the main media strategies, which we shall also observe in Globo’s editorials, is to repeatedly stress the legitimacy and the constitutionality of the impeachment, a repetition which itself suggests that there might have been some doubts about its legitimacy in the first place, generally questioned by leading jurists in the country (see also Carta Capital, Intervozes, 16 April 2016).
In the meantime, in mid-March 2016, mostly because of the pervasive manipulation by the media, massive demonstrations (mostly of the conservative middle and upper classes, who had no tradition of political mobilization) were held all over the country against the PT and Dilma, obviously magnified by the same media, and used as a populist argument to persuade members of parliament (MPs) to vote against the president. The campaign in favor of the impeachment also gained force because it allowed a tactic to go beyond a simplistic polarization between Left (PT) and Right (PSDB) involving broad adherence among large parts of the population. Large but smaller demonstrations in favor of Dilma and more generally in defense of democracy also took place, but were typically ignored or minimized by the media, although they increased after the impeachment, against the new Temer administration and its neoliberal policies.
Although manipulation theory (see later) would usually hold that manipulation is negative because it is in the interests of the manipulator and against the interests of the manipulated, in the case of the conservative elite (written) media in Brazil most of the readers are middle class and hardly needed to be manipulated, because most of them probably agreed with what they read in the first place: that the PT was bad and its power needed to be broken. However, in this case the media were crucial in motivating the middle class to take the uncustomary step of demonstrating en masse, by actively construing its reasons to do so. The JN did the same, but for a much larger, also popular, audience.
An important background for these demonstrations were local demonstrations, for instance those in São Paulo in 2013 against higher bus fares, whose participants were often described by the media as ‘vandals’ (see Silva and Marcondes, 2014). This means that in 2016 there was already a widespread potential for protest, soon generalized by the media to the whole country, though this time not with ‘vandals’ as protagonists but the whole Brazilian povo (people). Obviously, as we shall see in more detail later, protagonists of the demonstrations in favor of Dilma were only described in terms of radical party activists (‘militants’) and not as part of the povo. Interestingly, the March 2015 demonstrations against Dilma were already asking for her impeachment (see Catozzo and Barcellos, 2016).
Finally, upon the recommendation of the Câmara, presided by Cunha, and without impediment from the Supreme Court (which let parliament decide; see Feres, 2016), it was the constitutionally prescribed task of the Senate to judge the president, and more than the needed two-thirds majority on 31 August 2016 finally voted to impeach her. Interestingly, though, the Senate did not vote in favor of the proposal to curtail her political rights, which would be a normal consequence of an impeachment.
Despite ongoing major demonstrations against him, and although no one liked or admired him, Vice-President Temer automatically became President. He was viewed by the Left not only as a traitor of the government led by Dilma, but also as the figurehead of what was generally seen as a political coup (golpe) against her. All those opposed to the impeachment of Dilma have consistently applied the negative label golpista to him and his government, as well as the Globo Corporation and other media and politicians involved in the coup.
As if to counterbalance its earlier impeachment of Dilma, on 12 September 2016 the Câmara finally stripped powerful but generally hated Eduardo Cunha of his parliamentary membership (he had already earlier been suspended as president of the Câmara), thus losing his immunity against prosecution. He obviously was no longer needed after his role in the impeachment procedure and had become an embarrassment to the Right because of his obvious corruption, money laundering and (lying about his) Swiss bank accounts.
Globo and the Brazilian media
The media landscape in Brazil is dominated by a handful (more precisely, four or five) of rich conservative families whose companies have a virtual monopoly of newspapers and TV programs, as well as other services. Besides O Globo newspaper, there is the influential Folha de São Paulo, read especially by the business and academic elites, which also played a critical role in the manipulation of the impeachment process. Estado de São Paulo (commonly called Estadão), together with O Globo, supported the military coup in 1964 – although O Globo in 2013 apologized for its role in the military dictatorship (see Costa, 2015; Magnolo and Pereira, 2016). This was another reason why these newspapers were generally qualified as golpista in the many demonstrations protesting against the impeachment. Sales of these newspapers are relatively low (in 2015, 320,000 for Globo and 361,000 for Folha, according to their Wikipedia entries) in a huge country of more than 200 million people.
Besides these larger newspapers there are weekly magazines, such as Globo’s Epoca, as well as Istoé, especially Veja (which sells more than one million copies), all participating in the general media demonization of Dilma, Lula and the PT Party (see e.g. Matos, 2008; Porto, 2012).
It is remarkable that a large country such as Brazil, with a strong leftist tradition, does not have a single progressive newspaper, as is for instance the case in Argentina (Pagina 12) or Mexico (La Jornada), and only one progressive weekly magazine Carta Capital for the leftist elite (but selling only about 75,000 copies). Many (especially younger) people, however, have access to the Internet to read alternative news and opinions (55% of Brazilians had Internet access and 45% of Brazilians used social media in 2014). This means that the main conservative newspapers in recent years have lost sales and influence, especially with a younger and progressive populace, much of which has supported Dilma and the PT. But the conservative media, including those on the Internet, still dominated public opinion about the PT, Lula, Dilma and her impeachment, and were able to orchestrate massive demonstrations against them.
The powerful conservative media in Brazil are sometimes called the Partido da Imprensa Golpista (PIG) or the Party of the Coup Press (see the informative Wikipedia entry), given their political actions and influence as the ‘Fourth Power’ in decision-making in Brazil. Their general aim, as in the 2010 elections, is ‘The PT must not win’ (Mauricio Dias, in Carta Capital, 5 May 2010). The same critical Wikipedia article not only lists many examples of disinformation and power abuse of the media, but also cites the opinion of José Antonio Camargo, President of the Union of Professional Journalists of the State of São Paulo and Secretary-General of the National Federation of Journalists: Distorcer, selecionar, divulgar opiniões como se fossem fatos não é exercer o jornalismo, mas, sim, manipular o noticiário cotidiano segundo interesses outros que não os de informar com veracidade. Se esses recursos são usados para influenciar ou determinar o resultado de uma eleição configura-se golpe com o objetivo de interferir na vontade popular. Não se trata aqui do uso da força, mas sim de técnicas de manipulação da opinião pública. Neste contexto, o uso do conceito ‘golpe midiático’ é perfeitamente compreensível. To distort, select, disseminate opinions as if they were facts is not to practice journalism, but rather to manipulate the daily news according to interests other than those of truthful reporting. If these resources are used to influence or determine the outcome of an election this is a set-up in order to interfere with the popular will. This is not a use of force, but of techniques to manipulate public opinion. In this context, the use of the term ‘media coup’ is perfectly understandable.
We shall see later that this opinion aptly summarizes some of the conclusions of our analysis of the editorials in Globo below.
Globo Corporation
Within this conglomerate of conservative media corporations, Globo is not only the largest media company in Brazil but also one of the top four media companies in Latin America. Most relevant for the context of this study is not only O Globo newspaper and its continuous attacks against Lula, Dilma and the PT (see e.g. Almeida and Lima, 2016), but also the daily JN, a TV news program broadcast each evening around 20:30 between two broadly watched telenovelas. Although its audience has dropped over recent years, it remains the most influential news program watched by millions of Brazilians. As the second most watched TV program in Brazil in 2015, it had on average 7,200,000 viewers per minute (according to Ibope). For most of these, the JN was and is the only source of information about the country in general, and about the government, corruption and the impeachment proceedings in particular (see e.g. Becker and Alves, 2015). No doubt the diminishing popular support for Lula, Dilma and the PT is a complex process with many direct and indirect causes, including the economic crisis and its social consequences, the public perception of political corruption and the Lava Jato operation among others. Of crucial influence, though, is how these events were construed by the conservative media, and especially how Dilma and Lula have been demonized on a daily basis, especially by the JN.
As we shall see later, one of the interesting properties of the editorials of Globo in 2016 was their acrimonious reaction to the critical coverage of the impeachment in the international quality press, especially in the Guardian, where the term coup was used (see blog Carta Capital, Intervozes, 28 April 2016; Comunidade PT, 12 May 2016).
On 21 April 2016, the Guardian published an opinion article by journalist David Miranda – ‘The real reason Dilma Rousseff’s enemies want her impeached’ – in which he informed the international audience about the power of Globo and other media, and their rich owners, and how they manipulated public opinion against Dilma. Globo’s director João Roberto Marinho reacted immediately with a letter in the Guardian, claiming that the Brazilian media were independent and diverse, that Globo had no news monopoly, and that Globo did not incite the mass demonstrations against Dilma and the PT. His arguments were, in turn, ironically examined by David Miranda himself in a long opinion article in critical media review The Intercept (25 April 2016), in which he further detailed the role of Globo in Brazilian politics as the ‘leading propaganda arm of the Brazilian oligarchy’. He recalled that Reporters Without Borders in its last international ranking of press freedom ranked Brazilian media at the scandalously low position of 104. He also cited an Economist article of June 2014 entitled ‘Globo Domination’, which reported that half of Brazil’s population each day tune in to Globo’s JN. That estimate may be too high, but this does not mean that the JN does not have a dominating presence and tremendous influence in Brazil.
Theoretical framework: Manipulation
Since it is not the primary aim of this article to contribute to the theory of manipulation, we shall only briefly summarize some elements of the theoretical framework as applied in this study based on our earlier work on manipulation and discourse (Van Dijk, 2006) and on some other work referred to, but not reviewed, below.
Manipulation is a complex phenomenon that requires a multidisciplinary framework (see also De Saussure and Schulz, 2005), featuring a philosophical study of manipulation as unethical or illegitimate, mostly used as a critical term to describe the conduct of others, and hardly ever of ourselves; a sociological study of manipulation as a form of social interaction and a form of power abuse, and hence a relevant object of Critical Discourse Studies. a political study of manipulation by politicians or governments; a communication study of manipulation by the mass media; a discourse analytical study of manipulation as a form of text or talk; a cognitive study of the mental processes and representations involved in manipulation.
Manipulation may be interpersonal when individuals manipulate each other or societal when powerful organizations or institutions manipulate collectivities of people (like the readers of a newspaper, or the voters, or public opinion at large). In this study, we only deal with societal manipulation, although such manipulation may be locally implemented or enacted in everyday interaction of members of groups or institutions.
Most psychological studies of manipulation are experimental and tend to focus on various forms of interpersonal deception in interaction and discourse, which, however, is not the same thing as manipulation. Such deception may be described in terms of various ways in which the Cooperation Principle of Grice (1979) is violated, for instance, by covert implicatures (see McCornack, 1992; and an updated version in McCornack et al., 2014; see also Jacobs et al., 1996; Van Swol et al., 2012).
Societal manipulation as a form of domination or power abuse involves organizations or institutions as manipulating agents making use of power resources, such as access to or control over knowledge or public discourse (see e.g. Goodin, 1980; Kedar, 1987; Riker, 1986; Stuhr and Cochran, 1990). The targets of manipulation are usually characterized as having less resources, for example knowledge, to resist such domination.
Powerful corporations and other organizations, as well as nation states, may organize their communicative power resources in many ways, for instance by way of special public relations departments, press conferences, press releases, interviews, campaigns, advertising, propaganda, and so on – all geared to the communication of information that generally is in the interest of the organization, including forms of positive self-presentation (see Adams, 2006; Day, 1999; Key, 1989; MacKenzie, 1984).
The primary cognitive aim of manipulation is mind control, that is to influence people’s beliefs, such as their mental models (including emotions) of specific events, or their more generic knowledge, attitudes or ideologies, usually about important social issues. The indirect, secondary aim is action control: that people act (vote, buy, march, fight, etc.) upon such beliefs or emotions (see also Hart, 2013; Van Dijk, 1998).
More specifically, discursive manipulation often involves the communication of the preferred definition of the situation, defined as the formation or change of mental situation models, such as the identities and roles of the participants involved in an event, what action or event is taking place, and what its causes and consequences are (Johnson-Laird, 1983; Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983).
For instance, manipulative discourse may hide, obfuscate or remain vague about the identity of responsible elite actors or organizations of negative actions (such as discrimination), for instance, through passive sentences or nominalizations (see e.g.Fowler et al., 1979; Van Dijk, 2008b). Similarly, negative actions or events may be described in euphemistic terms (e.g. popular discontent instead of racism, see e.g. Van Dijk, 1993). This cognitive analysis of the role of mental models in manipulation is quite different from popular studies on ‘mind control’ (see also Jones and Flaxman, 2015).
8. Different from legitimate forms of mind and action control, such as education or persuasion, manipulation is generally in the interest of the manipulator and not in the interest of the manipulated. Typical in manipulation is that the motivations, reasons, goals or interests of the manipulator are more or less covert (see e.g. Adams, 2006; Day, 1999; Key, 1989; MacKenzie, 1984).
9. Some of the crucial characteristics of discursive manipulation are to be defined in terms of the communicative context, such as the kind and characteristics (identity, role, relations) of participants, the aims or intentions of the discourse or interaction, as well as their social and cognitive resources (Van Dijk, 2008b, 2009). Pragmatic studies of manipulation focus on such aspects of the context. Thus, Billig and Marinho (2014) make a distinction between manipulating information and acts of manipulating people (see also De Saussure and Schulz, 2005; Vázquez Orta and Aldea Gimeno, 1991).
Manipulation and discourse
As we have seen in some of the examples above, manipulative discourse in many ways may influence or control the mental models of the recipients, for instance by hiding the identity or responsibility of negative actions, the nature of actions or events or their causes or consequences, or conversely by attributing negative actions to opponents or out-groups.
As we shall see in more detail below in our case study, there are many discursive structures and strategies that may be used to control desired mental models, beyond the grammatical structure of sentences, such as
biased (e.g. derogatory) lexical items (see e.g. Cheng and Lam, 2010; Li, 2010):
implications and implicatures (see e.g. Jacobs et al., 1996); generalizations (Bilmes, 2008; Van Dijk, 1984, 1987) and metaphors (Chilton, 2005; Medhurst, 1990); forms of actor descriptions (Van Leeuwen, 1996); granularity and other modes of situation or event description: more or less precise or complete, detailed or vague, close versus distant, and so on (Bhatia, 2005; Van Dijk, 2014; Zhang, 2015); storytelling (see e.g. Auvinen et al., 2013; Van Dijk, 1984); argumentation (Boix, 2007; Ilatov, 1993; Kienpointer, 2005; Nettel and Roque, 2012); superstructural (schematic) categories, such as headlines in news reports (Van Dijk, 1988a, 1988b); general ideological polarization between in-groups (Us) and out-groups (Them; Van Dijk, 1998).
Corpus
Our corpus consists of the 18 editorials on Dilma, Lula, the PT and impeachment published in the Globo newspaper during the months of March and April 2016, strategically preceding the decision of the Câmara de Deputados to initiate the impeachment procedure against the president. The editorials accompany thousands of news articles in both Globo and the other conservative media, systematically presenting a grotesquely biased form of disinformation about Lula, Dilma and the PT. The editorials have been chosen as the target of this article because they explicitly formulate the opinions of the newspaper. We shall also briefly examine the headlines of the front page news articles about them, because this information is often presupposed in the editorials (a complete analysis of the epistemics of presupposed information in editorials would be an interesting topic of study).
The editorials, traditionally published toward the back (page 18) of the first part of the newspaper (in which national news is located), vary in length between 500 and 1000 words, and usually consist of four columns with the genre marker Opinião (Opinion) above the title and brief summaries between the columns.
Editorials as genre
In this study we shall not elaborate on editorials as a genre, because our aim is not to contribute to our general understanding of them as such. In fact, as a media genre in newspapers, despite many applied studies, there is as yet no explicit theory of editorials (but see e.g. Le, 2010). In our own earlier work we have often dealt with editorials, even from a theoretical point of view (Van Dijk 1988a, 1988b, 1989, 1992). But in light of our later work on context (Van Dijk, 2008a, 2009), we need more analysis of this genre in terms of systematic analyses of the communicative situation, which apart from the spatiotemporal setting, features participants in various identities (e.g. journalist, editor), roles (writer, reader), relations (e.g. senior editor), a social activity (writing an editorial) and its goals (influencing the opinions of the readers), and knowledge of the knowledge of the readers (in this case, for instance, about Dilma, impeachment, etc.).
As a genre text, editorials may have a canonical schematic schema (superstructure) consisting of categories (moves), such as Summary of the Events, Comments/Opinion on the Events and Conclusion/Recommendation. More specifically, the comments or recommendations will be organized by argumentation structures or (other) persuasive discourse markers. Style will be relatively formal, newspaper language (see e.g. Bagnall, 1993; Simon-Vandenberge, 1986; Van Dijk 1988a, 1988b). Opinions will be expressed in various kinds of appraisal (e.g. judgment about Lula, Dilma, PT or impeachment; Martin and White, 2005). Systematic analysis of a large number of Globo editorials would reveal more specific structures of their editorials as a genre in Brazilian newspapers, and fieldwork would need to be carried out to know more about its communicative context, such as who usually write(s) the editorials.
Methods
Here, systematic global and local discourse analysis of the editorials will focus primarily on those properties that may influence the mental models and attitudes of the readers in ways that are not obvious to them, and which hence may be called manipulative. Such influence may consist of the formation of preferred mental models of events, or the formation or confirmation of attitudes, attitudes which many readers of Globo already may have – and with which they may well agree. The influence of Globo in this case is crucial because negative opinions about the president or the PT may thus be legitimized by that of the newspaper or by knowledge about opinions and attitudes of other readers or Brazilians, as reported by the newspaper.
From this perspective, we shall first focus on semantic macro-structures (topics) of the front page headlines and then those of the editorials, before proceeding to the analysis of local structures, especially those of semantics, such as the identification and description of actors, as well as various strategies of argumentation and legitimation. Editorials are a persuasive genre, so we will, of course, focus on those properties that are geared toward the manipulation of opinions.
Analysis of Globo’s manipulation structures and strategies
News headlines
In order to understand the editorials, we must briefly analyze the main event(s) of the weeks preceding the impeachment procedure, especially since the editorials often presuppose knowledge of such events, and actually comment on them. However, such knowledge may be derived not only from the news about the main events of the day, but also more generally from the coverage of the same or related events over recent weeks, if not months. Such news has been presented not only in thousands of news reports, but also in columns, reportages, interviews and other genres – and hence would require a vast epistemic analysis that goes far beyond the scope of this article. We shall therefore limit our analysis to a brief description of the headlines of all main front page articles of the months of March and April 2016, looking at the size and position of the headline. By definition, these headlines have as one of their main functions the expression of the top level of the semantic macro-structure of the news report, that is, its main topic (Van Dijk 1988a, 1988b). But headlines also serve to draw attention to their message and may be ideologically biased. This means that if, for instance, Lula is being accused of some criminal act, whether or not this is the main topic, it may be expressed in the headline because of the ideological orientation of Globo, which will emphasize the negative aspects of their enemy or of the out-group, in general (e.g. PT or the Left, etc.).
Of the 60 main front page headlines of March and April 2016, an impressive 45 were about Dilma, Lula, PT, impeachment or (Dilma’s) government. Only at the end, after the impeachment procedure in the Câmara, do some main front page headlines turn to Temer (as acting president) and his government. Often more than one front page article is about Dilma or Lula. Even when no main event related to them has happened, they may be mentioned in the headlines of minor front page articles. Depending on their interpretation (for which detailed local discourse appraisal analysis would be needed), most of the headlines explicitly accuse or associate Dilma and or Lula with criminal activities, generally through accusations of the Lava Jato operation or many informers involved with the operation. Here are some characteristic examples (NH stands for News Headline):
Delcídio’s deposition puts Dilma in the center of Lavajato. President is accused of interfering in the investigation. Lula ordered Cervero’s silence.
Lavajato forces Lula to testify and Lula appeals to militant supporters.
Lavajato belies Lula’s version of triplex.
Military Police of São Paulo denounces Lula for money laundering and falsehood.
MP asks for prison for Lula.
Brazil goes to the streets against Lula and Dilma and in favor of Moro. Peaceful protests brought together 3.4 million people in 320 cities in all states and the Federal District.
Dilma can give Lula superpowers in the government.
(Phone) Conversation threatens Dilma.
Allies of Dilma and Lula hold demonstrations in all states.
PT gathers 275,000; 7% of the people demonstrating in favor of the impeachment.
Lula Defense asks the Supreme Court to stop Moro.
Supreme Court investigates whether Dilma tried to obstruct justice.
Dilma will use Bolsa Família against impeachment.
Prosecutor accuses Rousseff’s attempt to obstruct justice.
Commission approves report for the impeachment of Rousseff.
With 337 votes, 25 more than necessary, House approves authorization for the impeachment of president Dilma.
NEAR THE END
Ministers of the Supreme Court: Dilma offends institutions by talking about coup.
A first analysis of these headlines shows that in most headlines of these 2 months, and especially during the crucial weeks preceding the vote in the Câmara, Globo defines the (main) news in terms of Dilma and/or Lula as active or passive participants of events or activities related to criminal or legal affairs. They are represented as actively involved in crime, as the Lava Jato operation or others accuse them of crimes. In the later headlines, the focus is on the events in the Câmara up to 18 April when in detail, with precise numbers, the vote in the Câmara is reported, followed by a massive headline across the whole page: PERTO DO FIM (Near the End). Other major headlines, also with numbers, appear on 14 April, when the massive demonstrations against Dilma are reported. In that case, however, the main news of the demonstration is not limited to the front page, and continues in many other articles, columns and pictures on nine full pages. We shall comment on this news in our analysis of the editorials. On 19 March the demonstrators supporting Dilma also make front page news, but in this case in a negative comparison with the numbers of demonstrators against Dilma, so as to minimize the relevance of those demonstrators and the numerically much smaller support she has. Functional analysis of topic-comment organization and the headlines often puts Lava Jato, informers, the FP or the Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF)) in first topic position as agents of (mostly) accusing actions of Dilma and Lula who are in the focus position as semantic patients of accusation. Only in a few headlines is Dilma focus and agent, for example when she is directly accused of some (negative) act such as when she might appoint Lula and give him special powers or when she (threatens) to stop the Bolsa Familia scheme.
For several weeks at least (and indeed many weeks before that, since 2014), the overall information conveyed by these headlines, and hence repeated as the main information in the mental models of the event in the memory of the readers, is that (a) Dilma and Lula (are accused) of criminal activities and (b) (therefore) Dilma has been impeached. Crucial also is the repeated negative information about Lula, which is consistent with the negative attitude of Globo about Lula, and hence emphasized. Such a portrayal is primarily intended to delegitimize him in the eyes of millions of Brazilians who used to love or admire him. More relevant politically is that should Lula be convicted of corruption (allegedly a company paid for renovations in his apartment), he could not be a candidate in the next elections in 2018, a candidacy which would be a threat to the Right because Lula, at least until then, was still the most appreciated politician in the country.
The editorials
Main topics and biases
The general topics of the editorials are, as may be expected, similar to those of the main news event of the day or the day before, such as accusations leveled against Lula, Dilma or the PT. The (main) topics for the 18 editorials are shown in Table 1.
Headlines and topics of March and April (2016) editorials in Globo.
PT: Partido dos Trabalhadores; PMDB: the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party; STF: Supremo Tribunal Federal; UN: United Nations.
Although the (quite long, between 300 and 1000 words) editorials usually deal with several topics, it is obvious not only from the main front page news articles and their headlines but also especially from the main topics of the editorials which issues are most important for Globo, and therefore emphasized by frequency and size as well as semantic and rhetorical moves and strategies.
First of all, practically all editorials repeat and magnify the alleged criminal activities of Dilma, especially Lula, according to accusations of Lava Jato, or various informers, ranging from corruption (Lula’s apartment), obstructing justice (Lava Jato) and Dilma’s financial schemes to adjust her budget. Second, the editorials in many ways defend, legitimate (as ‘constitutional’) and exercise pressure upon the impeachment of Dilma. Third, they reject as absurd the accusations by Dilma and her followers that the impeachment is a parliamentary ‘coup’. Fourth, together with massive news coverage, they celebrate the large demonstrations against Dilma, Lula and the PT, and marginalize and delegitimize those of their followers. Finally, they legitimate Operation Lava Jato and Judge Moro, but mostly only when these are accusing Lula, Dilma or PT members.
That Globo in its editorial topics attacks Dilma, Lula and the PT is to be expected from a right wing newspaper, and – even though unjustified – it is not really manipulative, because readers will expect nothing else. As we shall see in more detail below, the editorials begin to be manipulative when their assertions or presuppositions of the facts are biased or false in ways readers cannot or will not readily check, because in that case we witness partisan and systematic epistemic control of the readers’ mental models.
First of all, both from dominant and repeated news reports as well as from the editorials, especially because of the exclusive focus on the accusations of Operation Lava Jato, readers may wrongly conclude that all or most corruption in the country is perpetrated by Lula, Dilma or the PT. Other politicians and parties are barely discussed in the editorials, initially not even Cunha, the powerful and corrupt president of the Câmara, at least as long as he expedited the impeachment procedure. In other words, Globo’s concern is not primarily the gigantic corruption of the country (as it would undoubtedly claim), but the delegitimization of the PT and its government, especially former President Lula, particularly as a possible candidate for the 2018 elections.
Second, the repeated emphasis on the legal and legitimate nature of the impeachment procedure, for example, with reference to the Constitution, the Supreme Court and the parliament, is defined in generic terms, namely that the Constitution does mention impeachment. However, it does not mean that in this particular case the impeachment was legal and legitimate for the specific financial decisions of Dilma’s government. Related to this point is that the news reports and editorials hardly pay attention to the legal arguments of many experts against the impeachment. Failing to provide this information is undoubtedly a form of manipulative knowledge management (omission of information).
Third, Globo repeatedly accuses Dilma, the PT and their followers for their use of the ‘absurd’ accusation that the impeachment is in fact a political coup, but does not provide information about the legal and political arguments of experts within the country, as well as much of the international quality press that support this judgment. This is another important example of manipulative omission.
Finally, extensive and positive coverage of public opinion and demonstrations against Dilma, Lula and the PT and in favor of impeachment, and its marginal coverage of the demonstrations against impeachment and in favor of Dilma, is more than partisan bias; it is an implicit argument in favor of the ‘democratic’ nature of getting rid of an elected president.
Local manipulation strategies
Globo’s general strategies in its editorials are locally implemented in many specific ways, from lexical derogation of Lula, Dilma and the PT, on the one hand, to its many semantic and rhetorical moves and strategies on the other. Without aiming to give a complete account, let us examine some of the typical ones in more detail.
Lexical derogation
Beyond the usual negative characterization of its political opponents, as would be normal in editorials, Globo uses a number of specific words associated with classical anti-communist rhetoric. PT and its followers are not merely called petistas, militantes or more commonly tagged with the derogatory term lulopetistas, associating PT followers with Lula. Much more aggressively, they are referred to metaphorically as tropas de choque (03 March 2016), falsely implying military style violence, or agitprop (20 April 2016), falsely implying that Dilma’s followers are communist agitators.
Selective accusations
We have seen that most of the news and editorials preceding the impeachment focus on the accusations of corruption against the PT. Locally, such selective accusations are routinely repeated, for instance, as follows: (1) Na verdade, soube-se depois que o aparelhamento lulopetista na Petrobras transcorreu paralelamente ao mensalão já a partir de 2003, início do primeiro mandato do Lula. (6 March 2016)
In fact, it has been known later that the PT’s rigging of Petrobras ran parallel to the mensalão scandal as from 2003, in the beginning of Lula’s first term.
Besides the use of the epistemic marker (soube-se – it has been known) implying certainty and not mere accusation, the involvement of the PT in the Petrobras corruption scandal is not only focused on but also enhanced in terms of an organized scheme, and by associating it with the (unrelated) previous major scandal (the Mensalão scandal of vote buying) in which the PT (and other parties) was involved. This type of accusation is standard in nearly all editorials.
Presuppositions
A well-known manipulating strategy is to use presuppositions instead of direct affirmations, as is the case in the following example: (2) Seria desastroso se, enquanto perseguia o dinheiro sujo, os investigadores fingissem não perceber que empreiteiras envolvidas no escândalo reformaram o sítio de Atibaia e o tal triplex de Guarujá. (5 March 2016)
It would be disastrous if, while chasing dirty money, investigators pretended not to notice that contractors involved in the scandal reformed the Atibaia site and the Guarujá triplex.
In this complex sentence about the Lava Jato investigators, the factive verb perceber (perceive, understand) presupposes that contractors involved in the corruption scandal renovated Lula’s flat and a house in the countryside (as payment for his allegedly favoring these companies). This was only an accusation and not a fact at all. This kind of presupposition thus functions as an oblique assertion, which is manipulative because it is less easily challenged than a direct assertion.
Disclaimers
In polarized ideological discourse, disclaimers play a crucial role, as we know from the classical racist denial ‘I am not a racist, but …’, which combines initial positive self-presentation with following and more detailed negative other presentation (Van Dijk, 1984, 1987, 1992, 1993). Globo, of course, knows that some of its accusations and delegitimization strategies are normatively problematic. So what happens is that they make a specific doubtful assertion, followed by a generic normative statement as a form of corrective positive self-presentation. Here is a typical example: (3) Nesta passagem, segundo Delcidio, Lula e Dilma teriam atuado juntos […] Toda delação premiada requer comprovações. (5 March 2016) In this passage, according to Delcídio, Lula and Dilma seem to have worked together […] All plea bargaining requires evidence.
In this case, one of the typical accusations against Dilma and Lula, as expressed by one of the informers, itself linguistically marked with the auxiliary verb teriam (allegedly had acted together), is followed by the disclaimer that (of course) all accusations made during plea bargaining need to be proven correct.
One prominent case during these weeks was a wiretap of a phone conversation between Lula and Dilma, in which she vaguely promises to protect him should this be necessary (e.g. by appointing him as a minister, protected against prosecution). Both in the newspaper and in its Jornal National, Globo also paid extensive attention to this conversation, although wiretaps of the president, especially publicizing them, are illegal – as later confirmed by the Supreme Court, criticizing Judge Moro for doing so. Globo realizes that it may be breaking the law (although it is never prosecuted for that) in publishing the contents of the wiretap, and thus does so with a strange disclaimer: (4) (Os grampos de Moro talvez fossem ilegais). Importa mais, porém, o conteúdo das gravações. (18 March 2016)
(The wiretaps may be illegal). What matters more, however, is the content of the recordings.
First of all, the admission of illegality is mitigated by talvez (perhaps). Second, Globo seems to make a distinction between the wiretaps as such and their content, the importance of which in this case (namely Dilma’s strategy to protect Lula) is emphasized, thus making the admission void. A similar disclaimer takes place in the following fragment: (5) Mesmo sabendo que era investigado Lula não se moderou ao telefone e permitiu que se registrassem em gravações legais memoráveis, típicos de quem não se preocupa com limites da lei e éticos na defesa de interesses próprios. Em uma gravação específica – cuja legalidade será decidida pelo Supremo – Lula e Dilma deixaram claro que a prioridade, na semana passada, e apressar a nomeação do novo ministro, agora sub judice, para protegê-lo de eventual prisão. (22 March 2016)
Even though he knew he was under investigation, Lula didn’t hold back on the phone and thus allowed the registration of legal memorable recordings, typical of someone who does not care about the limits of the law and ethics in defense of his own interests. In one particular recording – the legality of which will be decided by the Supreme Court – Lula and Dilma made it clear, last week, that their priority is to hasten the appointment of the new minister, now sub judice, so as to protect him from possible arrest.
The editorial first generally asserts that the wiretaps were legal, but then admits in an embedded clause that their legality will be decided by the Supreme Court. However, both semantically and syntactically, the disclaimer is hardly prominent in this passage, in which the doubtful ethics of Dilma and Lula takes front stage. If not a proper admission is formulated in a disclaimer, this can only be done in an indirect way as follows: (6) […] Gravação de gente com foro privilegiado – Dilma no caso – precisa ser despachada para o Supremo. Zavascki alertou e não está em questão a legalidade daquele grampo, mas a divulgação dele como fez Moro. Este discorda, e apresentará ao ministro formalmente argumentos em contrário. Teori decidirá ou levará a questão ao pleno do STF. Simples desta forma. (24 March 2016)
The recording of people with special immunity – Dilma in this case – must be dispatched to the Supreme Court. Zavascki warned that the legality of the wiretap is not in question, but rather its disclosure, made by Moro, who disagrees with this warning, and will formally submit to the Minister arguments to the contrary. Teori will take a decision or refer the matter to the full STF assembly. It is as simple as that.
In this example the illegality of wiretapping the president is explicitly asserted and recognized, although mitigated by the condition that such wiretaps are not published. Moreover, by referring to Judge Moro, who made the wiretaps public, in terms of his disagreement and arguments, Globo legitimates not only Moro (as they have done in all their coverage of this and other cases), but also itself for having published the wiretap. Again, in these various forms of disclaimer, it is not made clear for readers ignorant of the details of the law whether or not Moro and Globo broke the law – which obviously amounts to a way of manipulating public opinion.
Positive self-presentation
The dominant strategy of Globo’s news and editorials is extreme negative other presentation of Dilma, Lula and the PT, although other parties and politicians may occasionally be mentioned negatively when accused of corruption or money laundering. Positive (self) presentation is generally focused on the institutions of the State, such as the Supreme Court, the FP or Operation Lava Jato and Judge Moro.
Especially negative is the portrayal of all those who think and say that the impeachment of Dilma is in fact a political ‘coup’, including the foreign press. The editorials not only extensively argue against this accusation, but also engage in a quite remarkable and exceptional form of self-reference and positive self-presentation functioning as a legitimation of Globo’s own opinion and coverage: (7) O jornalismo profissional demonstrando mais uma vez sua excelência, tem publicado livre e destemidamente tudo o que diz respeito ao que já pode ser rotulado como a maior esquema de corrupção que vitimou o Brasil. Em muitos casos está à frente das investigações escancarando o que de errado foi feito nesse pais. Age, assim, sob a proteção da constituição que garante ampla liberdade de imprensa. (12 March 2016)
Professional journalism, once again demonstrating its excellence, has published freely and fearlessly all that relates to what can already be labeled the largest corruption scheme of which Brazil has ever been a victim. In many cases it is ahead of investigations, divulging what was done wrong in this country. It acts, thus, under the protection of the constitution that guarantees broad freedom of the press.
Besides asserting its own professionalism, although indirectly in terms of a generic reference to professional journalism in general, Globo prides itself not only for exposing the largest corruption scheme ever in Brazil, but also for being at the front line of the investigations, as if Globo were part of Operation Lava Jato. At the same time, in the last sentence, it does so by reference to the freedom of the press, in this case not as an obvious value of democratic society, but much more specifically as an implicit argument legitimating its coverage and accusations, and as a protection against accusations of its systematic bias and disinformation.
Suspicions and accusations as facts
Perhaps the most pervasive manipulative strategy of Globo’s news and editorials during these months is presenting suspicions and accusations as facts, that is, without the usual or obligatory markers of doubt or distance (adjectives such as alleged or special auxiliary verbs). In the coverage of the huge and very complicated Lava Jato operation and the corruption of Petrobras and other companies, it is thus very difficult if not impossible for readers to know what are mere accusations or suspicions and what has been proven in a court of law: (8) Configurou-se, assim, uma ação dos dois [Lula e Dilma] para obstruir a Lava-Jato, crime passível de punição nos tribunais. (18 March 2016) Thus, a scheme was set up between the two of them to obstruct Lava-Jato, a crime punishable in the courts.
In this example there is no question of a suspicion: the alleged obstruction of justice by Dilma and Lula is asserted as a fact and reinforced by explicitly qualifying it as a crime. See also: (9) Há, ainda, a suspeita surgida de uma fita gravada por um assessor de Delcídio com o ministro da educação, Aloizio Mercadante, de que por meio do ministro, a presidente estaria tentando impedir a delação do senador. Interpretações pelo juiz Sérgio Moro de gravações legais de conversa entre Lula, ainda não nomeado, Dilma, em outro momento, o ministro Jaques Wagner em que surgem indícios de tentativas de obstrução da justiça e defesa do ex-presidente. Dos diálogos alimentam discussões. A questão deste tipo de interferência de Dilma cresceu ontem à noite, com a divulgação […]. (17 March 2016)
There is also the suspicion that arose from a tape recorded by Delcídio, adviser to the Minister of Education, Mercadante, that through the minister, the president might have been trying to stop the plea bargain accusation of the senator. Interpretations by Judge Sergio Moro of the legal recordings of the conversation between Lula, as yet unnamed, Dilma, at another moment, minister Jaques Wagner, in emerging evidence of attempted obstruction of justice and defense of the former president. Dialogues feed discussions. The question of this type of interference by Dilma grew last night, with the disclosure (…)
First, the fragment refers to a suspicion that Dilma had tried to prevent the accusation of the senator, a suspicion duly expressed by the conditional of the auxiliary verb estaria (would be trying). Similarly, the fragment refers to interpretations of Judge Moro and evidence of obstruction of justice. However, toward the end of the fragment, after these first expressions of doubt or distance, the topical expression ‘the question of this type of interference by Dilma grew …’ implies that such interference is a fact. Note also that whereas there may be serious doubts about the legality of the wiretaps of Judge Moro, the Globo (again and routinely) qualifies them as legal – both to legitimate Moro and to protect itself. Such a transformation from suspicion to fact is even more explicit in the following example: (10) Seja como for, gravações legais de conversas telefônicas de Lula liberadas na noite de quarta pelo juiz Sérgio Moro implicariam de forma evidente o ex e a atual presidente em gestões para barrar a Lavo-Jato, consideradas atos de obstrução de justiça. Fica estabelecido então que para Dilma e Lula vale mesmo tudo para se manter no poder. (18 March 2016)
In any case, legal recordings of Lula’s telephone conversations released Wednesday night by Judge Sergio Moro would imply evidence that the former and the current president were trying to stop Lavo-Jato, which are considered acts of obstruction of the justice. This shows that for Dilma and Lula anything goes to stay in power.
Following its standard editorial strategy, Globo begins to emphasize in this fragment the legality of the wiretaps, for example in order to counter possible doubts of the reader. But it then uses the expression ‘evidently’ by changing a possible interpretation of the conversation into a proven fact – adding again that this would be an obstruction of justice. Moreover, the final sentence is even more explicit in stating that it has been established as a fact that Dilma and Lula are not only obstructing justice but adding a political motive for why they did so: staying in power.
Generalizations
A well-known rhetorical strategy in negative other presentation is to elevate a single case of (alleged) misconduct to a general characteristic of the opponent: (11) Também acontece uma catástrofe imensa no plano ético na economia. Nunca houve confiança absoluta no PT, mesmo quando o primeiro governo Lula o planalto aderiu ao receituário correto. (6 March 2016)
Also a huge catastrophe on the ethical level in the economy is taking place. There has never been absolute confidence in the PT, even when the first Lula government applied the correct recipes.
Besides the rhetorical hyperbole (‘immense catastrophe’) exaggerating the economic policies of Dilma’s government, Globo in this case faithfully expresses the negative. Conservative attitudes of the Brazilian oligarchy toward the PT and Lula, even when the economy was doing well and following neoliberal orthodoxy, show that this judgment is in fact a form of prejudice. This historical perspective is especially illuminating for explaining the virulence of the current anti-PT attitude of Globo and the Right as they face the economic crisis.
Numbers game
Classical, and typical of news coverage of out-group members, is the rhetorical move of the numbers game, which suggests statistical precision and credibility, but which in fact is used as a strategic means to emphasize the negative qualities of opponents or the situation attributed to them. Here are a few of many examples: (12) (Lula) Sua imagem foi arranhada: segundo recente pesquisa Datafolha 58% acham que ele ganhou de empreiteiras o tríplex reformado de Guarujá, em troca de favores é 55% consideram o mesmo em relação ao sítio de Atibaia. (6 March 2016)
Lula’s image was tarnished: according to recent Datafolha research 58% think he got the renovated triplex Guaruja from contractors, in exchange for favors and 55% think the same about the Atibaia site.
(13) Mas os milhões de manifestantes de domingo contra Dilma, Lula, PT e em favor de Sérgio Moro e Lava-jato – não importa se 3,6 segundo os PMs, ou 6,9, de acordo com os organizadores. (17 March 2016)
But the millions of protesters Sunday against Dilma, Lula, PT and in favor of Sergio Moro and Lava Jato – whether 3.6, according to the police, or 6.9, according to the organizers.
(14) Embora pesquisas mostrem que mais de 60% da população apoiam o impeachment, 33% defendem a Presidente Dilma Rousseff. (12 April 2016)
Although research shows that over 60% of the population supports the impeachment, 33% favor President Dilma Rousseff.
The numbers game has several functions in these examples. First of all, reference to the opinion poll emphasizes that Lula no longer enjoys the massive support he used to have. Second, although there is only a question of public opinion, if the majority of the people (although hardly competent to judge the facts) think Lula is corrupt, then for Globo this means confirming a suspicion. Similarly, the very number (millions) of demonstrators against Dilma also seems to imply that Dilma not only has lost her earlier popularity, but is also guilty of financial misconduct and hence should be impeached, as is more explicitly expressed in example (14). Since numbers are presumed not to lie, the editorials may thus manipulate the very public opinion it refers to, and at the same time the politicians, always thinking of re-election.
Delegitimizing the accusation of the ‘coup’
We have seen that the widespread critical view of Dilma’s impeachment was effectively summarized by the slogan Golpe (coup), also used around the world by many newspapers. It is not surprising, then, that this very notion provoked furious reactions from Globo, because it also reminds readers of Globo’s association with the coup and military dictatorship of 1964. But perhaps a major reason for these reactions is that the terms quite precisely indicate that Dilma’s financial actions were only a pretext for her impeachment, and that what really happened was a parliamentary coup against an elected president, a conspiracy in which Globo itself played a major role. It is not surprising therefore that there is practically no comment in the editorials on the many arguments against the legality of the impeachment. Hence, the reactions against the accusation of a coup are not rational or argumentative but mostly emotional, as is obvious from the many following examples, which we cite extensively because they play a central role in Globo’s self-legitimating editorials: (15) O PT, por sua vez, insiste no mantra do ‘golpe’, cada vez mais desafinado diante das evidencias de que tudo tramite sob o manto da Constituição. (15 March 2016) The PT, in turn, insists on the mantra of a ‘coup’, increasingly out of tune in the face of evidence that all formalities took place under the cloak of the Constitution. (16) Para compor o clima ficcional, a presidente traçou o quadro de um país imaginário em que haveria um golpe em andamento contra ela. (24 March 2016)
To set up the fictional climate, the President sketched a picture of an imaginary country where there would be a coup in progress against her.
(17) Na estratégia de defesa e nas ações de agitação e propaganda do PT e de uma presidente acuada no Planalto, a palavra ‘golpe’ ganha grande relevância. ‘Golpe’ é curto, fácil de pronunciar e adequado para ser gritado em manifestações. (30 March 2016) In the PT defense strategy and agitation and propaganda, and a president cornered in her office, the word ‘coup’ acquires great significance. ‘Coup’ is short, easy to pronounce and suitable to shout in demonstrations. (18) […] a militância criou termos paradoxais como ‘golpe constitucional’. Ora se é golpe não pode ser constitucional. […] Pura manipulação, porque Brasil 2016 nada tem a ver com o de 1964. (30 March 2016) […] militant followers created paradoxical terms such as ‘constitutional coup’. Well, if it is a coup it cannot be constitutional. […] Pure manipulation because Brazil in 2016 has nothing to do with (the coup of) 1964. (19) Numa ação típica de agitprop, agitação e propaganda, o PT disseminou a ideia de que haveria um ‘golpe’ em andamento no Brasil sob o disfarce de um processo de impeachment. Disciplinada a militância foi em frente. […] (20 April 2016) In a typical agitprop action, agitation and propaganda, the PT spread the idea that there seemed to be a ‘coup’ in progress in Brazil under the guise of an impeachment process. Militants filed forward in disciplined fashion. (20) Retornou ao cantochão do ‘golpe’, o que já fizera em entrevistas à imprensa estrangeira. (20 April 2016) Returned to the chant of the ‘coup’, which she already had done in interviews with the foreign press. (21) Golpe com a participar do Supremo, no Brasil, seria candidato a entrar no Guinness no quesito bizarrice. (20 April 2016) A coup with the participation of the Supreme Court, in Brazil, would be worthy of the Guinness Book of Records as an example of creepiness.
Legitimation of impeachment
Precisely because there was widespread doubt about the legality of the impeachment or about the criminality of Dilma’s financial schemes, Globo engages in repeated and detailed arguments and other persuasive strategies to legitimate (its support of) the impeachment: (22) […] foi importante que a Câmara instalasse logo a comissão do impeachment. (19 March 2016) it was important that the House should immediately install the impeachment commission. (23 Ao mesmo tempo começa a funcionar a comissão do impeachment. É assim que deve ser: as instituições em funcionamento – Legislativo e Judiciário – para que se supere a crise sem qualquer desobediência à Constituição. (22 March 2016) At the same time, the impeachment committee is starting up. This is how it should be: the institutions – legislative and judicial – working to overcome the crisis without any violation of the Constitution. (24) Logo inexiste qualquer justificativa razoável para a atuação para o Senado não dar início a fase de julgamento da presidente com urgência máxima. Obedecidos todos os trâmites legais com respaldo do STF: chega a ser uma questão de segurança nacional. (18 April 2016)
Next there doesn’t exist any reasonable justification not to initiate the action for the Senate to judge the president with utmost urgency. Once all the legal requirements have been satisfied with the support of the Supreme Court: it is a question of national security.
Its legitimation moves here consist in insisting that the impeachment decision be taken by parliament and the judiciary, as the legitimate (and functioning) institutions of the State, and by applying the Constitution – implying that there is therefore no question of a coup. Of course, this is a fallacy, because it presupposes that the organs of the State cannot make illegal or illegitimate decisions. Moreover, as in example (24), the impeachment is even irrelevantly legitimated in terms of national security.
Populist strategies: The ‘street’
The main goal of Globo’s news coverage and editorials concerning the events of the impeachment was to influence public opinion and – both directly as well as indirectly, via massive demonstrations – the politicians. Thus, we find repeated metonymical references to the rua (street): (25) Mas os milhões de manifestantes de domingo contra Dilma, Lula, PT. (15 March 2016)
But the millions of protesters Sunday against Dilma, Lula, PT.
(26) Às favas com a histórica demonstração de repúdio aos dois e a seu partido dada nas ruas no domingo por milhões de brasileiros. (17 March 2016)
To hell with the historical demonstration of outrage against the two and their party in the streets on Sunday by millions of Brazilians
(27) Querer agitar as ruas com palavras de ordem agressivas para interferir nesse processo é trabalhar contra o país. E contra o próprio desejo de ficar no Planalto. (24 March 2016)
To stir up the streets with aggressive slogans in order to interfere in this process is to work against the country. And against her own desire to stay in office.
(28) Todas as forças políticas têm de combater a ideia tóxica de que tudo se resolverá nas ruas. Pois apenas agravará a situação contra os interesses de todos os brasileiros. All political forces have to fight the toxic idea that everything will be solved in the streets, since it only aggravates the situation against the interests of all Brazilians.
Such populist strategies first of all are formulated in terms of the rhetorical strategy of the numbers game as in ‘millions’ (25, 26). Second, these manifestations are, of course, manipulated and interpreted as only against PT, Dilma and Lula, and not as (also) an expression against corruption in general. But of course, our demonstration is judged very differently from their demonstration, which in example (27) is negatively in terms of ‘agitation’ and ‘aggression’, and as ‘against the country’! And in example (28), we find the usual disclaimer, namely that it is a poisonous idea that all problems are resolved in the street – quite a contradiction with Globo’s own celebration of the march against Dilma, Lula and the PT.
Delegitimatization of Lula and Dilma
As we have seen in the news headlines as well as in the manipulation strategies of the editorials, Globo’s main manipulation strategy is the consistent demonization and delegitimization of Lula and Dilma, crucial conditions for the impeachment of Dilma and to block a possible candidacy of Lula in the 2016 presidential elections. This biased partisan coverage beyond the ‘normal’ negative portrayal of one’s opponents is manipulative because of its hyperbolic nature (hundreds of news articles and dozens of editorials of a few weeks) and the marginal interest in serious forms of corruption of other parties and politicians. The attack against Lula is based on the suspicion (so far not proven) that the renovation of an apartment was paid for by a company, although it was established that the apartment was not even in his name. (Of course, Globo does not report on the huge mansion used by Globo’s’ owner, João Roberto Marinho, in a environmentally protected area in Paraty, and owned by a company involved in Lava Jato.) For her part, Dilma had never even been accused of corruption but only of allegedly trying to block Lava Jato operations (e.g. in the case of payments made to her election campaign).
The manipulative nature of these repeated accusations derives in the first place from the difficulty readers have in distinguishing between facts and accusations when these are repeated daily. Second, the demonization of Lula and Dilma is not an unbiased, general campaign against corruption in the country, and though legitimated as in the interest of the country as a whole, is primarily in the political interest of the Right, as well as its mouthpiece, the Globo Corporation, in order to wrest political power from the PT. Here is one of the numerous negative passages about Lula in the editorials, after Dilma’s idea to protect Lula by appointing him as a member of her cabinet: (29) Importa para elas manter a militância reunida em defesa do projeto de poder, dar-lhe fôlego na venda da ilusão de que o inteligente e esperto ex-metalúrgico, torneiro mecânico de ofício, consertará os graves danos que ele mesmo ajudou a provocar na economia, e tudo isso só com vontade política discurso e carisma […] Queda vertiginosa de Lula […] jararaca ferido no rabo, desejosa de vingança. (17 March 2016) It is important for them to keep the activists gathered in defense of the power project, give them breath by selling the illusion that the intelligent and smart former metalworker, a machinist by profession, will repair the serious damage that he helped cause the economy, and all this only with political talk and charisma […] The vertiginous fall of Lula […] viper wounded in the tail, eager for revenge.
First of all, followers of Lula are described in terms of the term militância, implying violence. Second, the participation of Lula in the government is described as an illusion when intended to solve the economic crisis. But the real (class) attitude of Globo about Lula is expressed in the ironical and derogatory phrase ‘the intelligent and smart ex-metal worker, a machinist by profession’, implying the proposition ‘How could a simple blue-collar worker save the country from an economic crisis?’. Such an insult is especially manipulative when the newspaper does not remind the readers that the major economic successes of Brazil had taken place during Lula’s government.
Dilma is virulently attacked in an editorial of 24 April 2016, in which she is believed to have dishonored the country and its institutions during a visit to the United Nations (UN) in New York by internationally spreading the accusation of the coup against her, as follows: (30) […] viajar para Nova York […] pretexto para aproveitar o palanque internacional e fazer o discurso mentiroso do golpe. Assim Dilma assume a postura de dignitários de ‘repúblicas bananeiras’ tendo um comportamento bizarro perante a diplomacia internacional. Pior: com a própria presidente fazendo ataques a ordem instituída do seu pais, contra o congresso e o Supremo Tribunal Federal. Ineditismo absoluta – no mau sentido – na história do Brasil […] Querem desenformar a imprensa internacional, na impossibilidade de fazer o mesmo com o jornalismo profissional brasileiro. […] Agora a própria presidente se vale da prerrogativa de ser representante máxima em fóruns diplomáticos para usar a tribuna da ONU de maneira oportunista, a fim de tratar de um problema político pessoal e do seu partido […] Mas Dilma e o PT parecem acreditar na teoria do nazista Joseph Goebbels, de que uma mentira dita mil vezes vira verdade mesmo que eles prejudiquem o Brasil. (21 April 2016) […] travel to New York […] an excuse to take advantage of the international platform to spread the lie of a coup. So Dilma takes the posture of dignitaries of a ‘banana republic’ with bizarre behavior in front of international diplomats. Worse, with the president herself attacking the established order of her country, and speaking against Congress and the Supreme Court, this is an absolute novelty – in the bad sense of the term – in the history of Brazil […] They want to misinform the international press, unable to do the same with the professional journalism of Brazil. […] Now the president herself takes advantage of her prerogative of being the highest representative in diplomatic fora to use the UN tribune opportunistically in order to deal with a political problem involving herself and her party […] But Dilma and the PT seem to believe in the theory of the Nazi Joseph Goebbels that a lie told a thousand times becomes truth even if it harms Brazil.
Ironically, Dilma never mentioned her impeachment in the UN but Globo merely feared she would do so, and thus anticipated its attack against her in order to defend Brazilian institutions, especially an impeachment which abroad could be seen as a coup. It is not surprising, then, that the editorial formulates its appraisal in terms of ‘lying’, ‘bizarre’, ‘attacks’, ‘unheard’, ‘opportunist’ and so on.
Conclusion
Against the background of the current sociopolitical situation in Brazil, an analysis of news headlines and editorials of Globo has shown that the newspaper systematically manipulated its readers, public opinion and politicians in order to promote and legitimate a coup as a constitutionally-based impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. It did so not only by extensive daily reports and editorials about the alleged criminal conduct of Dilma, Lula and the PT, but also through many different discursive strategies, such as presenting accusations as facts, celebrating and legitimating the anti-PT judge Moro, populist coverage of demonstrations, disclaimers, numbers game rhetoric, positive self-presentation, and attacking the accusation that the impeachment was in fact a political coup.
The manipulative nature of this news coverage and editorials, as well as of Globo’s Jornal Nacional, is its focus on alleged misconduct of Lula and Dilma in legal matters that the general public is unable to understand or verify. By omitting information about the expert opinions of legal scholars or of the international press, for example about the grounds for impeachment, the newspaper is not merely politically biased but engages in serious misinformation about the president and ex-president. Even more fundamentally, by its (obvious) silence about the real goals of the impeachment, namely to finally end the government and power of the PT, the newspaper becomes the mouthpiece of an ideological conspiracy of the conservative oligarchy to return to political power after 13 years, thereby confirming and continuing its economic power. Because of Globo’s near monopoly of TV news, millions of Brazilians have little access to alternative, more balanced information. It is this abuse of epistemic and doxastic power by corporations such as Globo that constitutes one of the major problems of democratic societies such as Brazil.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
For corrections and suggestions, I am indebted to Patricia Gouveia, João Feres Júnior, Carmen-Rosa Caldas and Rodney Williamson.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
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