The Intercept Brasil's innovative strategy for covering the powerful

Ever since it was born, the Brazilian version of The Intercept has dedicated itself to covering our country’s politics from the viewpoint of investigative journalism. Its mission has been very clear from the start to hold the powerful accountable through extensive reporting.

It was no surprise, therefore, when Glenn Greenwald announced that he and his team had received and archive related to the Car Wash Operation, the most important and most controversial corruption probe in Brazilian history. The Intercept Brasil started its series of articles on June 9, on a Sunday night, revealing that the most notorious judge connected to the operation, Sergio Moro, had advised the prosecutors in the Car Wash task force.

This news are political and legal dynamite. It is illegal under our country’s Constitution, for the judge to communicate or exchange any kind of information with the accusation or the defense. Also, Moro is now the Justice Minister of Brazil, appointed by president Jair Bolsonaro. There is a real possibility that Moro’s cases will be annulled. More specifically, Moro’s conviction of former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, who has been in prison for over a year.

Essays can be written about all the legal and political implications this case has but I will limit myself to commenting on the ingenious strategy The Intercept Brasil has devised to publish the stories. So far, at least nine articles have been published. This is all the political media in Brazil talks about.

The first blow to the judge and prosecutors

When the first revelation was published, the people involved didn’t deny that what The Intercept Brasil has was true. Deltan Dallagnol (Car Wash’s most prominent prosecutor) and Sergio Moro condemned what they saw as an invasion of their privacy. It was only after a couple of other articles that exposed their conversation on the Telegram messaging app that they started using the strategy of suggesting that the content might have been tampered with. At the same time, they started using the word “hacker” to describe the source that provided the material to Greenwald and his team.

If you’ve been following Brazilian politics over the last few years, you know that it was predictable that not only the people exposed but their defenders online would react to the revelations, often in ugly ways. In the first week after The Intercept’s first article, social media users started suggesting that Greenwald be deported from the country (he lives here since 2002, is married to a Brazilian and has two Brazilian children).

Then, more recently, a profile on Twitter spread hoaxes about David Miranda, with whom Greenwald is married, accusing him of buying his congressman spot. Miranda substituted Jean Wyllys, who was elected in last year’s election but decided to leave the country due to death threats. Overall, those who are fierce supporters of Bolsonaro, the Car Wash Operation and Sergio Moro have completely rejected the revelations and dismissed them as either fake or the work of “criminals” (namely hackers).

All that being said, I want to get into the detail of the strategy that The Intercept Brasil team has devised to not only address the criticism but also to respond to them using more facts and more revelations.

The strategy devised by The Intercept Brasil

The Vaza Jato (a play on the word “leak” and Car Wash’s name in Portuguese) series is not only about exposing misdoings of judge Moro and the prosecution but also using the strategy they used when exposing those who they were investigating — and, at the same time, using their own reactions against them. Let me explain.

I will not get into all the details and the timeline of Car Wash. Instead, I will use one emblematic case to illustrate how the Taskforce acted in its prime years. On March 16, 2016, then president Dilma Rousseff appointed former president Lula as her Chief of Staff. Rousseff was facing the threat of impeachment and Lula had been the key target for the Car Wash operation for several months. The Taskforce provided documents, excerpts of plea deals and other materials to the press on a weekly basis, in the hopes of gaining support from the public opinion and weakening Lula’s political capital. Successfully, I might add.

A ceremony in Brasilia made it official: Lula was now part of Rousseff’s government. It was an attempt to save her government and maybe stop the political crisis Brazil had been under since 2014. A few hours later, at dinnertime, Jornal Nacional (the most important TV news broadcast in the country) put on the air a recording of a telephone call between Lula and Dilma. The conversation seemed to suggest that the purpose of appointing him was to shield the former president from the Car Wash investigations.

That was a bomb in the political world. Everyone was debating whether the tapped phone call showed an attempt at obstructing justice or not. Two days later, the Supreme Court suspended Lula from the position so that investigations about obstruction of Justice could be conducted.

What does this example show? That the Lava Jato team was coordinating their investigation with the moves on the political chessboard. This was not the only time in which this happened. To my point, later we learned that the recording was illegal. Moro didn’t have the Supreme Court’s authorization to tap Dilma (which is required by Law when you are investigating a president). Also, Moro had taken advantage of a legal request he had made to wiretap phones to extend the action beyond the time limit he had permission to do so.

Beyond providing the audios to the Jornal Nacional, the Lava Jato Taskforce also released many other conversations Lula and his family had that were completely unrelated to the investigations. Private conversations. Moro defended the release of these audios as a way of exposing the powerful and bringing them into public scrutiny.

A taste of their own medicine

Well, this is exactly what The Intercept Brasil has been doing. Each new article does not only bring a new revelation. The journalists analyze Moro and Dallagnol reactions and responses and respond to that in each installment. One good example happened last week. Moro was invited for a hearing at the Senate and denied that he advised the prosecutors in any way. On one conversation, he complains to Dallagnol that one prosecutor was very bad at hearings and something should be done about her. During the hearing, Moro said that there was nothing wrong with that and the proof was that the criticized prosecutor remained in the Taskforce.

A few days later, in a partnership with the political commentator Reinaldo Azevedo, The Intercept revealed that the prosecutors removed the colleague that had displeased Moro from the hearings in Lula’s case. And they had talked about it based on the message the judge had sent. The argument here is that Moro’s “suggestions” were promptly accepted, which is illegal.

Another aspect of The Intercept’s strategy is something Greenwald had already done with Edward Snowden’s revelations. He partnered with other outlets to not only publish the stories but also share the materials. This has been very important in Car Wash Leaks because the material has been challenged. On social media and on vehicles sympathetic to judge Moro, people put the messages into question. They argue that since no one other than The Intercept has had access to the material, it can be false or manipulated.

By partnering with other journalists and giving them access to the leaks, The Intercept Brasil makes sure that it gets verified outside of their own organization. The aforementioned Reinaldo Azevedo was the first one to publish an article based on the Car Wash messages. Today, daily Folha de S.Paulo was the second. The brilliance of this strategy is that it legitimizes their investigation, serves other journalists interested in reporting on the case, and strengthens the journalism ecosystem.

Also, Greenwald, Leandro Demori and other The Intercept Brasil team members have been giving interviews to explain the case and bring awareness to their coverage. I personally don’t remember any journalists doing that in the past or recent present. Greenwald even went on Pânico, a comedy show very popular with the middle class, something unthinkable for Brazilian journalists.

Adapting to the new ways information is consumed and distributed

What I am trying to say is: The Intercept Brasil is innovating on the way they publish and “market” their important revelations. Instead of putting out a whole bundle of articles and materials, they understood that the public forum of opinions (as political theorist Nadia Urbinati would say) is very different today. Now, more than ever, we need to work with these dynamics and have strategies that take what happens in real time into consideration.

In my opinion, the Car Wash Taskforce is getting a taste of their own medicine. I’m not judging their strategy as bad or good as a whole (although I am critical of their mistakes and illegalities). But now they are facing public scrutiny that is unpredictable. Their every step is being watched by The Intercept Brasil and anything can and will be used against them. So far, Greenwald has used this with maximum journalistic rigor, which is something we have to applaud.

The Car Wash leaks may be a new beginning for journalism in Brazil and all over the world. There are many lessons that can already be learned and many more to come.

You can read the whole Car Wash Leaks series in English here: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-archive-operation-car-wash/