What is the role of the media in the formation of a filter bubble?
There wasn't a weekly magazine in Brazil that didn't dedicate a cover story to businessman Eike Batista, and almost all of them were laudatory; in one of them, from Veja magazine, he was even hailed as Eike Xiaoping, as if he were teaching Brazil that "getting rich is glorious"; in the coming days, major private banks, the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank), and the government will have to deal with the likely restructuring of the EBX group's billion-dollar debts; those who believed in the hype are now counting their losses.
247 - Never in the history of Brazil has there been a businessman like Eike Batista. A salesman of projects, not companies with concrete results, he achieved the feat of becoming the eighth richest man in the world (today he is no longer even among the top 100) by promising almost the equivalent of land on the moon. Investment banks packaged his projects, and Eike became one of the most media-savvy figures ever seen in the business world. Wherever there was a spotlight, there he was. If Madonna came to Brazil to ask for support for an NGO, Eike would appear with a million-dollar check to also gain his additional 15 seconds of fame.
For a long time, Eike believed he could manage the expectations of the financial market through sheer rhetoric – or perhaps by manipulating his Twitter account, where he always optimistically sold unfulfilled promises to unsuspecting followers. However, he wouldn't have gone so far if he hadn't also built a powerful alliance with journalists and media outlets. In the press, his two main allies in this wave of bravado were Ancelmo Gois, from Globo, and Lauro Jardim, from Veja. Ancelmo always called him "Eike, always him, Batista," as if the businessman were a machine for producing brilliant ideas. Lauro, in turn, anticipated the movements of the EBX group in his Radar Online column, which always impacted the financial market and the stock prices of its shares.
Always available for interviews, the businessman was on the cover of practically every weekly magazine, from Veja, where he was called "Eike Xiaoping," to Carta Capital, which condemned the lack of risk-taking among businessmen. And in the same way that he moved in the media, Eike also circulated with ease in political circles. Not only in the federal government, which opened the doors of the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) to him, but also in the governments of states like Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Amapá, and Maranhão, where his projects had some impact.
Eike's dream, however, has come to an end. With a debt of over R$ 20 billion, concentrated mainly in the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank), he will begin restructuring his payments in the coming days. The warning of the "pre-default" was already given last Friday through his unofficial spokesperson, Lauro Jardim, who warned that the major banks will bear part of the loss.
These will be significant losses, but perhaps not as great as those suffered by investors who believed in the image of an infallible businessman built by Eike and various media outlets. Shares of OGX, his oil company, have already fallen 88% in a year. Shares of the LLX port, the OSX shipyard, and the MMX mining company have also become worthless. And if "Eike Batista" was able to sell illusions, this was only possible because he had the support of a friendly and often uncritical press.