Analysis: NYT’s bizarre coverage and omissions of Bolsonaro’s murderous coup plot

Post date December 11, 2024 What is going on at the New York Times’ Latin America desk?

Brazil’s Federal Police released an 884-page report on November 26, laying out the evidence used for its November 21 indictments of former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 of his cronies. Among the revelations are evidence showing that Bolsonaro knew about a plot carried out

This news was covered in media outlets around the world, from the Washington Post,

Five days earlier, in an article about the indictments, Times

As I’ve written before (FAIR.org, 7/7/23), the Times has aligned itself with a toxic narrative pushed

Furthermore, since the failure of that attempt, the attacks on Moraes have been used

Moraes’ central position as a target in the strategy is demonstrated in intercepted WhatsApp conversations between members of the group who were indicted in the coup investigation. A review of Times articles covering Moraes over the last two years shows that, at the least, the newspaper has acted as an unwilling accomplice, or “useful idiot”

‘Knowingly false allegations’

On July 19, 2022, Bolsonaro held an event in the Presidential Palace for dozens of foreign diplomats. There he spent over an hour railing against Brazil’s renownedelectronic voting system. Without providing any evidence to back up his statements, he announced that if he lost the October 2 presidential election, it would be a sign of voter fraud.

The entire event was broadcast live on TV Brazil, Brazil’s national public television station, in violation of Brazil’s election laws against abuse of power for electoral purposes. It was this event which, months later, caused the Superior Electoral Court to bar Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years.

Thirteen days earlier, according to the Federal Police report (p. 7), the president held a meeting with high-ranking military officers and cabinet ministers. There, he

presented a narrative which had been built to spread knowingly false allegations, without any concrete evidence, suggesting that there would be fraud and manipulation of votes in the Brazilian elections. [He] used the meeting to spread attacks and make insinuations of crimes he said would be committed

Intercepted communications between the people indicted show that, in the ensuing months, Moraes would become the primary target or, as they proclaimed in military jargon, the “center of gravity” of the coup (p. 14).

‘Going too far?’

Weeks after Bolsonaro’s event, and six days before the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, the New York Timespublished a hit piece (9/26/22) on Brazil’s judiciary, called “To Defend Democracy, Is Brazil’s Top Court Going Too Far?”

As I later wrote for FAIR (5/14/24), the primary target of the article, written

The power grab

This wasn’t original analysis

The dissemination of false narratives through digital influencers and some members of the traditional media, with strong penetration among a segment of the population aligned with the right-wing of the political spectrum, maintained the discourse of an illicit action

The narrative of Supreme Court overreach continues to be the key pillar of the amnesty movement. As this campaign picked up momentum, the Times spread doubt regarding the judiciary as it oversaw investigations into anti-democratic behavior

‘Crisis of democracy?’

As time passed, an investigation into illegal use of social media during the 2022 election season, an inquiry ordered

In May 2024, a group of GOP lawmakers held a congressional subcommittee hearing called “Brazil: A Crisis of Democracy, Freedom and the Rule of Law?” As I documented for FAIR (5/14/24), the most-cited

One of the panelists at the hearing was Paulo Figueiredo. Introduced as an “investigative

made use of the modus operandi developed

In February, 2024, the Federal Police announced that Figueiredo was under investigation for spreading electoral disinformation during the lead-up to the January 8, 2023, coup attempt. Many

In an article

Mr. Musk “has bowed down,” Paulo Figueiredo, a right-wing pundit who had his X account blocked in Brazil, wrote in a post on Thursday, when Xfirst hired new lawyers in Brazil, signaling a shift in stance. “It’s a very sad day for freedom of expression.”

The Times failed to mention whyFigueiredo was blocked, or his family ties—a connection it had made before, in the 2019 article “Investors in Former Trump-Branded Hotel in Brazil Charged With Corruption” (1/31/19):

Mr. Figueiredo, the grandson of the last military dictator in the

The different framing illustrates the Times‘ double standard: When it’s useful to attack Trump, Figueiredo is identified as the grandson of an

‘I’ll say what I want’

The Times‘ Nicas (10/16/24) continued to platform far-right figures with suspect backgrounds while using the story of X‘s ban and reinstatement in Brazil to undermine Brazil’s judiciary in “Is Elon Musk’s Brazilian Nemesis Saving Democracy or Hurting it?” The article opened with:

Daniel Silveira, a policeman turned far-right Brazilian congressman, was furious. He believed Brazil’s Supreme Court was persecuting conservatives and silencing them on social media, and he wanted to do something about it.

So he sat on his couch and began recording. “How many times have I imagined you getting beat up on the street,” he said in a 19-minute diatribe against the court’s justices, muscles bulging through his tight T-shirt. He posted the video on YouTube in February 2021, adding, “I’ll say what I want on here.”

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice immediately ordered his arrest. A year later, 10 of the court’s 11 justices convicted and sentenced him to nearly nine years in prison for threatening them.

While the Times notes Silveira’s YouTuberant against the Supreme Court, it failed to explain the context of his arrest. Silveira, who was kicked out of Rio de Janeiro’s Military Police after 60 disciplinary procedures, had been publicly inciting violence against the Supreme Court and its ministers for months, even after receiving warnings.

In one YouTube video, quoted in the Supreme Court case, he says: “When a soldier or a corporal knocks on your door, locking it won’t help. It will be ripped down. Yes, the armed forces will intervene and this is what we want.”

In the US, federal judges can investigate threats against them through the judiciary’s own police forces, such as the US Marshals and US Supreme Court Police. Yet the Times described the Brazilian Supreme Court’s investigation as a “highly unusual move,” while citing Moraes, central target in Brazil’s failed coup attempt, 22 times.

A target omitted

A series of events that unfolded in November have put a halt to the amnesty movement and attempts to prepare Bolsonaro for a Trump-like return in the 2026 elections.

On November 13, a member of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) detonated bombs in Brasilia’s Three Powers Plaza. Security footage shows him setting off a car bomb, attacking the Supreme Court with fireworks, and accidentally blowing himself up when his backpack bomb ricocheted off a statue. Several PL officials immediately called him a lone suicide bomber, a narrative echoed

On November 19, Federal Police arrested a police agent and four army officers from the “Kids Pretos,” an army special forces division, for plotting to assassinate President-elect Lula, Vice President-elect Geraldo Alckmin and Moraes in December 2022. Planning reportedly occurred at the home of Bolsonaro’s former defense minister and VP candidate, General Walter Braga Netto. Police said a hit man had been stationed near Moraes’ home on the planned assassination night, but the attempt was aborted due to a scheduling change at the Supreme Court.

Despite outlets like

Although the Times ignored it, the news that Justice Moraes was an assassination target has undermined the far right’s narrative portraying him as overreaching in his oversight of federal police investigations into threats against Supreme Court justices and their families.

Just three days after the indictments, a November 24 Times article

On the same day, the article was published verbatim in Portuguese in Brazil’s third-largest newspaper, the conservative Estado de S. Paulo(11/24/24).

Historic window

The November 21 indictments have opened a historic window of opportunity in Brazil. For the first time since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985, the judiciary is poised to hold high-ranking military officials—including those, like Bolsonaro security advisor Gen. Augusto Heleno, who were actors in Brazil’s bloody military dictatorship—accountable for breaking the law. Furthermore, there is a real possibility that Brazil will avoid suffering from the same system failure that led to Trump’s return to the White House,

Why, at a moment like this, would the Times continue to bolster Brazil’s Trump-aligned far right

FAIR’s work is sustained