{"id":26739,"date":"2016-02-03T11:32:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T14:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=26739"},"modified":"2016-02-03T11:32:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T14:32:03","slug":"what-the-mainstream-media-gets-wrong-when-covering-favelas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=26739","title":{"rendered":"What the Mainstream Media Gets Wrong When Covering Favelas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The original text was published in Portuguese by community reporter and activist Thain\u00e3 de Medeiros* on his Facebook page<\/a>\u00a0and republished on Favela 247<\/a>. Thain\u00e3\u00a0is an organizer of the\u00a0Coletivo Papo Reto<\/a>\u00a0media collective in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every time someone interviews me about\u00a0Coletivo Papo Reto<\/a>, they ask why it\u2019s important for the favela to have its own media outlets<\/a>. There are many answers to that question, but this is the first that comes to mind: when the mainstream media<\/a> tries to write about us, they always screw it up. I thought about all the times the media had screwed me over directly–times they had cited me, someone I know, or a close friend\u2019s initiative. Here’s the list:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Early 2013. My family\u2019s house on Morro do Caracol in Penha<\/a>\u00a0collapsed. An article came out saying it had been in an area of risk<\/a>, and that my family had been receiving social rent<\/a>\u00a0from the government for a year. Neither statement was true. To this date there’s been no compensation, no rent assistance.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n
    1. In 2013 we held the first “farofa\u00e7o<\/a>.” This was a direct action we staged with other favela groups. We occupied the beach<\/a> to challenge the use of that space. Since some South Zone<\/a> residents\u00a0were worried we’d leave\u00a0trash on\u00a0the beach, we brought plastic bags to carry out our own garbage. As a form of protest, we also brought some garbage the government had left in the favela that week: bullet casings from a police shootout. We stuck the casings to a piece of cardboard and wrote, \u201cWe brought the trash they left in our favela.\u201d What did the press have to say the next morning? In the O Dia<\/em>\u00a0newspaper it went something like this: Despite their difficult lives, the good-natured favela folks sure know how to smile. In another article (not sure, but I think it was in the newspaper Folha<\/em>): Black blocs<\/a> bring bullet casings to the beach in protest.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        \n
      1. When the\u00a0Alem\u00e3o<\/a><\/em>\u00a0movie was premiered\u00a0in Barra da Tijuca<\/a>, there was a protest here in Alem\u00e3o (which also has a movie theater). During the protest<\/a>, the police shot a young man in the foot. What did the\u00a0papers say? Drug traffickers<\/a> pay R$200 to protesters in Alem\u00e3o (Extra <\/em>newspaper).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          \n
        1. Some young people in the favela made their own action film, Tra\u00e7os da Lei<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Traces of the Law)<\/em>. They got permission to film and everything. They were using airsoft guns, also with permission. Everything was going fine. They posted pictures on Facebook to announce the opening of their film. Everything was great. Then the TV station Record <\/em>used their pictures in a story, claiming they were the drug traffickers who had killed a police officer.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
            \n
          1. At Coletivo\u00a0Papo Reto we have a series called Retrato Falado<\/a> (Spoken Portrait) in which we interview residents we consider significant to the favela. One of the first was Luis Moura<\/a>, also known as Guinha. He was a member of Coletivo\u00a0Papo Reto, a gay rights activist and an important community leader. A few months later, Guinha was murdered, and his appearance on our program was the last record of him alive. TV broadcasters started circling our material like hawks. They asked to air it on a national network but we refused. Not only was the story about a dear friend, but showing it could have put us at a security risk. They went ahead and ran a story about it anyway, using a clip from our program that completely screwed us over (RJTV<\/em>, Jornal Nacional<\/em> TV news).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
              \n
            1. An Alem\u00e3o resident sent us a photo of children on the floor of a school, taking cover from a shootout. We were asked to publish it, keeping the source confidential. We decided not to allow anyone to use the image. Ok, we were pretty naive, since it was already online and partly out of our hands. However, we never imagined that a newspaper like Extra<\/em> would use it without our permission. But they did. They had even asked us, and we had said no. The journalist said, \u201cIf I want readers, I\u2019ll go see what else I can find out.\u201d In other words, \u201cWho cares about the people involoved; I want the story. Your life is in danger? Go to hell!\u201d All he cared about was his reputation, and selling papers!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
                \n
              1. In an attempt to publish something positive about what we do, O Dia<\/em> ran a story about our complaint that the police had been inspecting residents\u2019 cell phones, which is illegal! The article highlighted our complaint, and emphasized that the police were acting illegally. But the title of the story referred to \u201cNGO Papo Reto…” NGO? I couldn’t believe it. I made a copy and posted it<\/a> on the collective\u2019s page, with my objections. The journalist who wrote the story commented on the post, and later sent me a personal message, saying that according to who-knows-whose definition, an NGO is a not-for-profit group of individuals doing who-knows-what, and that Papo Reto is an NGO, even though we don\u2019t have a CNPJ [a tax\u00a0ID number] or funding, and he gave me a boring academic lecture. I haven\u2019t studied journalism, but I took a few communications courses in my museum studies program. I replied that the readers of O Dia<\/em> don\u2019t have PhDs, and that if we were described as an NGO, they would think that meant we were a formal organization with government funding, and blah, blah, blah. Just read the comments under the post<\/a>! He insisted he was right, and asked me to take down the post because it was ruining his reputation\u2013he was only concerned about his own reputation! Him<\/em>! Him<\/em>! Him<\/em>! And he<\/em>\u2026 might have problems at work. We, who \u201cnever\u201d suffer death threats, physical or verbal violence\u2013he wasn\u2019t worried about us. You think I took it down? It\u2019s been a few months now\u2026 Actually I\u2019m thinking about reposting.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                Those are a few examples. There are so many others:<\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. When they say our dead are \u201csuspects,\u201d even though there’s no evidence;<\/li>\n
                2. When they always portray a black person as a criminal;<\/li>\n
                3. When they find reasons for it to be praiseworthy to clamp someone to a post for phone theft<\/a>, while overlooking the fact that this was a heinous act of torture;<\/li>\n
                4. When they tout a miniseries called \u201cSex and Black Women<\/a>\u201d which doesn\u2019t have a single black screenwriter or director;<\/li>\n
                5. When they cheer for the ridiculous slogan, \u201cWe are all monkeys<\/a>\u201d;<\/li>\n
                6. When they’re silent on the genocide of black people<\/a>;<\/li>\n
                7. When they say that the blame for some\u00a0workers being\u00a0held up on their way to work is that\u00a0other workers are blocking the streets, protesting for their rights;<\/li>\n
                8. When they hide the fact\u00a0that workers are late because bus fares have gone up and they don’t have enough money.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                  A lot of whens\u2026.<\/p>\n

                  *Museologist Thain\u00e3 Medeiros, 32, lives in the Penha favela complex. He is a current member of the Papo Reto Collective.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                  Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas The original text was published in Portuguese by community reporter and activist Thain\u00e3 de Medeiros* on his Facebook page\u00a0and republished on Favela 247. Thain\u00e3\u00a0is an organizer of the\u00a0Coletivo Papo Reto\u00a0media collective […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1294,1668,1328,1290,1331,1463],"tags":[1027,1050,977,1606,1653,32,1075,1117,23,1845,1681,1366,1937,37,193,17,558,18,156,453],"writer":[1936],"translator":[508],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-participationwatch","9":"category-by-community-contributors","10":"category-civilsociety","11":"category-opinion-2","12":"category-perceptions","13":"tag-area-of-risk-designation","14":"tag-beach","15":"tag-citizen-journalism","16":"tag-coletivo-papo-reto","17":"tag-community-media","18":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","19":"tag-critique","20":"tag-journalism","21":"tag-mass-media","22":"tag-media","23":"tag-media-collective","24":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","25":"tag-morro-do-caracol","26":"tag-north-zone","27":"tag-penha","28":"tag-police-brutality","29":"tag-prejudice","30":"tag-protest","31":"tag-south-zone","32":"tag-stigma","33":"writer-thaina-de-medeiros","34":"translator-rachel-fox"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26739"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=26739"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=26739"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=26739"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=26739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}