Ronaldo's Mistake and the Brazilian Media's Response

I hadn't planned on writing about soccer-star Ronaldo having (mistakenly) picked up some transvestite prostitutes. It just didn't seem relevant. I really don't care what Ronaldo (or anybody else) does or does not do in his spare time, and hadn't thought the story was really worth writing about. So he apparently picked up a couple of prostitutes, only to discover they were transvestites. Embarrassing for him, yes, but who cares? Prostitution is legal in Brazil, so he wasn't doing anything illegal. And not to put too fine a point on it, but picking up transvestite prostitutes with ease in Brazil is well within the realm of possibility - they often gather in places like Copacabana, and are not too hard to find in Lapa on any given night, and the fact that many have facial hair removed via lasers or even have surgical procedures to remove their Adam's apple can lead to some confusion, I suppose. Certainly there must be more important things going on in Brazil, right? Why would I blog about this?

Well, I wasn't going to. But the New York Times writeup hits upon something important in this - the media's obsession with this story (and stories like it).

But not all of Brazil’s soccer fans seem ready to forgive and forget. Reports of Ronaldo’s wild night, which ended around 8 a.m., have become Page 1 news here.

To be clear, the criticism he is facing is nothing compared with the media frenzy that would probably have erupted in other countries where prostitution is illegal — and sexual mores more rigid. Still, the fact that Ronaldo’s misadventure has been front-page news here for several days — and that some cartoonists and blogs have made him the butt of jokes, even as other commentators have said his behavior is unbecoming of a role model — is evidence that soccer stars are held to a different standard.

That last sentence is almost irrelevant - since when did many role models meet such high standards? By and large, those people who are the focus of the public eye are sports stars, celebrities, etc. - not the people who should be role models (good parents, teachers, etc). Nor am I fully convinced by the article's discussion of sports and masculinity (anytime anybody cites Roberto DaMatta as their sole authority on the matter, I'm extremely skeptical for reasons too complext to go into here).

But that's neither here nor there. The real issue here is the media itself. There are a lot of important things going on in Brazil, yet what is making front-page news there (and even drawing the gaze of the international media)? Ronaldo's embarrassing mistake.

And unfortunately, that is just the way of mainstream media in Brazil. It is, quite simply, the most sensationalist media source I've ever seen. Not to fully excuse my lack of recent blogging, but there hasn't been much from me on Brazil lately because the media is just miserable. Prior to the Ronaldo story, the headlines had been (and continue to be) overrun with the murder of a (middle-class, white) 5-year-old girl in Sao Paulo. Even the Madeleine McCann story still is present, as O Globo ran a special on "Madeleine McCann -One year later" [Remember her? "Sure, she went missing when her parents left her alone with her younger twin siblings in what was obviously a vulgar abuse of parental authority, but that's not important - THERE'S A WHITE BRITISH GIRL MISSING IN PORTUGAL!!! STOP THE PRESSES!!!" For whatever reason, that story was huge in Brazil for months.].

I'm certainly not versed enough in communications and media studies to answer the "chicken-and-egg" question of whether the media gives this to the people because it's what they want, or if things like this are what the people want because the media gives it to them (I see no reason to believe it's a bit of both). But to find anything about how Brazil's economy is doing, real issues, or even how the government is doing, is really difficult in Brazil's major media sources.