This week on CounterSpin: ABC World News Tonight told viewers what it thought they needed to know: "Bolsonaro Loses Brazilian Election, Leftist Former President Wins by Narrow Margin."
The victor of Brazil's consequential presidential race has an actual name; it's not "leftist former president"...or "former shoeshine boy," as the New York Timeshad it--or even "savior," as CNNsuggests supporters view him. He's a person, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, a popularly supported former president, whose program had, and has, more to do with helping poor people in Brazil than with securing the kind of extractive, profit-over-all, devil-take-the-hindmost international relationships that elite US media applaud. So just, get ready, is all we're saying. For a Latin American president taking steps to protect the human life–supporting Amazon to be presented in the press as a flawed, corrupt self-server suggests that uplifting the poor and saving humanity might just be too expensive a proposition.
It's hard not to imagine the use that a differently focused press corps might make of Brazil's change of direction. We'll talk about it with Brian Mier, of Brasil Wire and TeleSur's From the South, as well as co-author/editor, with Daniel Hunt, of Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil.
