The cornered animal and the communication strategy

Originally published on the blog brick

Upon reading this news on Brasil 247Regarding Veja's recent escapade of sponsoring yet another smear campaign in book form, this time using Romeu Tuma Júnior, I conclude that Abril is determined to remain one of the most aggressive attack lines against the government. And the desperate tone reveals a cornered and desperate beast, and therefore, a dangerous one.

The media war against the Dilma government today is just a small but important section of a much larger confrontation happening all over the world, especially in the Americas. It is an ideological war, between the machine and man, between money and labor.

Therefore, it is wrong for the government to underestimate Veja's power of influence. Its objective is no longer – perhaps never was – to win over the masses. It is enough for it to convince important sectors of the middle class. The vanguard of capitalism, what sustains it everywhere, is the middle class, because only it has the quality (money) and quantity (number of families) on a sufficient scale to acquire the goods with the highest added value. The masses acquire household appliances, but it is the middle class that buys the most expensive models. And it is the most expensive and modern models that need the most publicity, and therefore, the most media coverage.

In a country where the majority of the population is still very poor, the tendency of capital, therefore, is to form a middle class that is increasingly distant from the lives of the people.

The Brazilian media has lost any ethical scruples it may have once had. It has become vile, unscrupulous, and evil, as Paulo Nogueira, who knew it from the inside and from its very top, aptly described.

However, she has reason to be desperate. The growing succession of scandals involving members of the PSDB party, especially the train scandal, directly affects her, and they need to be hushed up, and what better way to do that than with a supposedly bombshell book about Lula.

The opposition's attacks on Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo seem to have had a beneficial effect. The previously timid Cardozo, always willing to bow down to arguments presented by the press, has become more assertive. In popular terms, he's become "bitter."

The moment calls for a tough stance without tenderness. The sadistic display by the media opposition, on the occasion of the arrests of the defendants in Criminal Action 470, revealed its moral degradation and its base spirit of revenge. It is important to note, moreover, that the sadism came from the media, not from the partisan opposition, showing that the most dangerous adversary of the government and the PT is no longer, for some time now, the PSDB. The PSDB has become a mere political arm of the media, but it is the media that makes the decisions.

It's not all media outlets, but a specific bloc, which we know very well, ideologically led by the richest, most radical, and most internationally connected: the Marinho and Civita families.

It is necessary to develop more robust communication strategies to deal with this situation, especially since it appears to be affecting the national economy. Keynes already warned Roosevelt about the damage to economic development if the animosity of the media (they hated Roosevelt, seen almost as a communist by the radical right in America at the time) affected the country's entrepreneurial spirit.

If the media limited itself to insulting its adversaries, that would be fine. But that doesn't satisfy it. It wants to manipulate – and often succeeds in manipulating – the judiciary and the public prosecutor's office.

And it wants to influence entrepreneurs to not believe in the country. The drop in investment, seen in the third quarter GDP, reflects pure pessimism, and without any reason. Household consumption has grown; industry is strong and growing; infrastructure projects are progressing – with irritating slowness, but progressing; inflation is under control. Even the fiscal issue was extraordinarily resolved with the success of Refis, the Federal Revenue Service program. The country is discovering more and more oil, gas, and other natural resources.

It's ridiculous that private investment is declining in such a scenario. But that's what's happening, because there's no effective media counterpoint from the government forces. The blogosphere has played a remarkable role, but we still don't have the firepower to neutralize the systematic media attacks on the national economy.