The text below is a transcript of the author’s remarks to the M20 Media Freedom Summit held online in Delhi on September 6, 2023 by the M20 Organising Committee, which comprises eleven editors from India and a former judge of the Supreme Court.As we see in almost every media market, the central challenges in Brazil are related to the search for a business model that may sustain independent and critical journalism, which is the one Folha de Sao Paulo stands for.In our case, the solutions have included a paywall, branded content and funding from foundations for specific coverage. Solutions that are also pursued by other media outlets around the world, with good results in Folha’s case, allowing for stability in the newsroom and a journalism that keeps its distance from the recent governments in Brazil, first with Jair Bolsonaro on the Right and now with Lula on the Left.The power of governments in Brazil over the media is felt mainly through advertising funds. In the past four years, there was some bias, for example, towards TV networks that, although with lower ratings, received more funding than the leading, more critical one, Globo. With Lula, over the last six months, the situation has reversed. There was also a resumption of government advertising on the main newspapers, which had been cut out by Bolsonaro.At the moment, attention is more focused on artificial intelligence. What we seek is to intensify its practical use by journalists, in the transcription of interviews, in translation and also in some research.The other focus is to safeguard, as much as possible, the [copyrighted] content of the newspapers, after Brazilian media outlets were mentioned as having been scrutinised [or, ‘scraped’] by commercial AI training tools. This is the aspect of AI that worries us the most now – more than ethical standards or limits for the journalistic use of it, which seem to be relatively established, after much debate.The challenges in this relationship with the tech giants that are already dominant in AI mirrors another troubled relationship, with the search and social media giants, the so-called advertising duopoly. Google and Facebook, especially the former, have achieved strong reach and power in Brazil, as in other markets, with huge impact on the online audience of media outlets and also on the establishment of public policies for media and technology.Nelson de Sa is Asia Correspondent and Media Columnist, Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil.
