“Nobody told me, I was at the table with Sérgio Amadeu, Sabrina Fernandes and Gregório Duvivier, as well as Glenn himself. The atmosphere of tension was enormous. Our speeches were interrupted by bombs and fireworks,” Castilho said.

By Alceu Castilho

On Facebook

The miserable Brazilian press managed to hide – or muffle – what happened yesterday in Paraty: fireworks were thrown against the table where journalist Glenn Greenwald was and in the direction of a crowd of at least a thousand people, by a group of noisy supporters of Judge Sérgio Moro. Ironically, during a debate on “Journalism in the Time of the Lava Jato”.

The fireworks were fired by two potential killers. They came very close to Flipei’s pirate ship. But the press colleagues preferred other narratives. As if that wasn’t the news, anywhere serious in the world. And not just the fact that the fascists (no, they didn’t use that exact word) drowned out much of the debate with loud sounds.
O Globo was the closest to the news. Although it was limited to the subtitle. The other vehicles, not even that. The Folha and UOL vehicles had at least three reporters on the scene, apart from the photographers, but they preferred to ignore the attack, against freedom of expression and against a crowd.

Nobody told me, I was actually there (although 247 had amputated my participation), at the table with Sérgio Amadeu, Sabrina Fernandes and Gregório Duvivier, as well as Glenn himself. The atmosphere of tension was enormous. Our speeches were interrupted by fireworks launched in our direction. The beginning of the debate was barely heard by the public.

One of the reporters from Folha de São Paulo, curiously invited by the organisers of Flipei to accompany Glenn to his arrival on the ship, on a flight, wrote a text dazzled by his own puncture. But he did not see much importance in the fireworks, which were fired horizontally. At one point in the text, she seemed outraged when she reported that the organisers had infiltrated far-right WhatsApp groups.

Yes, reporter, and that’s how they knew there would be a demonstration. This allowed the crossing of the bridge to be interrupted, as the police (indifferent to the attack, as well as the Flip organisation) had barricaded themselves there. What was the great political sin of the last few days? To be at the mercy of a few fireworks in the head, like you, like me, okay?

We’re trying to do journalism in barbaric times. Lava Jato is nothing more than an expression with traces of legality of this abject violence, of this celebration of the grotesque. A simulacrum swimming in the swamp, in the middle of this radicalization of the history of Brazilian infamy.

Some of us journalists will continue to resist. Others prefer to pretend to be intrepid independent reporters, even “investigators,” when they are at the service of a rotten narrative that we still live in normal times.

And not in front of people who have almost any idea in their head. And some fireworks in the hand.

Pressenza Note: Journalist Glenn Greenwald from the Intercept has denounced the corrupt legal procede implemented by Sergio Moro that led to the incarceration of Lula da Silva. See https://www.pressenza.com/2019/06/lava-jato-brazil-the-intercept-reveals-conspiracy-between-judge-and-prosecutors/