Brazilian Media: Fantástico – Brazil’s Best Television News Program
June 23, 2011 1 Comment
Fantástico is Brazil’s own, idiosyncratic answer to Sixty Minutes.
Fantástico regularly lives up to its name and satisfies Brazil’s passion for the supernatural and the offbeat. In 1996 it created a major stir with exclusive footage of what it claimed to be two UFOs seen over Brazilian cities. And in 2001, it had a report about a flying woman who was found in a Brazilian village.
This hour-long show features short, always interesting news reports on world events, interviews with international celebrities as well as great investigative reporting and funny clips and out-takes from television around the world. Fantástico in many ways holds a mirror up to Brazil’s attitude to the world and its place in it. As a result, the show simultaneously reflects the country’s seriousness and its surreal sense of fun.
A staple of Brazilian television for more than three decades, Fantastico competes even with the telenovelas at the top of the nation’s TV ratings. In its many years on air, Fantástico has interviewed international stars from Pele to Paul McCartney, Alfred Hitchcock to Bill Gates and even Michael Jackson. The show has started to gain a popular online following due to the outrageous nature of some of their reports, and also because of their international celebrity performances. You will find many clips from Fantástico on YouTube. Fantástico is aired on Rede Globo on Sundays at 9:00 PM in Brazil.
Here are some clips from Fantástico that I think really highlight what this hour-long news show is all about:
Brazilian Politician Uses Stolen Donations to Build Himself a Castle
Edmar Moreira: taking plitical greed to a whole new level
This first one I remembered watching the last time I was in Brazil in 2009. It really struck me because it reveals the sheer brazenness of corruption in Brazilian politics, and the attitude of helplessness that Brazilian people feel in preventing this kind of thing from happening. It is also testament to the fearlessness of Fantástico’s investigative reporting in a country where corruption runs deep and can be a dangerous thing to talk about. Basically what happened was that this small-time politician, Edmar Moreira, a representative from the state of Minas Gerais, secretly built this totally ostentatious medieval-style CASTLE (using funds stolen from social contributions) somewhere out in the countryside. That’s right, it was not a just mansion, but a castle. And unsurprisingly, this castle did not appear in his tax return. “Castle Vania,” as it is called, is reported to be worth more than $20 million reais. Moreira probably would have gotten away with this whole thing if Fantástico’s reporters hadn’t come in and blown his cover, reporting that this castle actually belonged to him. Since the story became so public and controversial, the Brazilian General Attorney (Ministério Público) made some public statements of outrage regarding the matter and promised to investigate. Of course, the case against Moreira is still pending and he has run again for re-election.
An Illiterate Man Enrolls In A For-Profit School In Brazil
Ok, this second video clip is a bit newer, and I couldn’t find the clip of this story that was aired on Fantástico, but it also illustrates the Brazilian media’s brilliant investigative reporting.
Some background on this story is that for-profit “educational institutions” have become a recent phenomenon in Brazil, much in the way that they have here in the United States. It has become common knowledge that for-profit schools use shady recruiting practices (like the way University of Phoenix recruiters were notoriously caught going to homeless shelters to boost their enrollment numbers). Basically for-profit education has no standards and they will let anyone into these schools because students are just like paying customers, so more students means more money. So what happened here was that journalists found an illiterate man who had passed the entry exam of a for-profit school in Brazil. The illiterate candidate says that he “just guessed” on the questions which resulted in him passing the test. He then attended the school for three years. Even though they profess having standards for entry, would a school really admit a student who couldn’t read or write anyway just for their own gain? The answer was yes.
Here’s the link for article from Rede Globo if you prefer to read about it:
Michael Jackson Interviewed in Brazil
And lastly, here’s an interview by Fantástico with Michael Jackson in Brazil from 1996. Search for more Fantástico interviews with American stars on YouTube if you are interested, they have interviewed everyone, even Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus.
This is Fantástico’s Official Website: http://fantastico.globo.com/
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