|
I
explained her that was not our intention, so she could calm down. It
sounded weird. “Calm” was a word that did not exist in that woman’s
vocabulary anymore. Fear fallowed her eyes wherever she went. We asked
her for an interview. She agreed, since it was not recorded.
“Let’s go outside”, she said. We went to the veranda. Five
members of Fazendo Media, besides her two lawyers. In fifteen
minuts Cristina smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. She trembled and
looked at all sides, frenetically, as if someone – or something –
observed her. She told us how the reporters of TV Globo were compelled
to go back several times to a same slum to record images, even after
they had been threatened of death by the traffic, as it was her case
and Tim Lopes’. “What many people don’t say is that, in the week
Tim disappeared, a little note was published in a newspaper saying
that the Globo employees did not use their identity card anymore.
Their heads were wanted”, she revealed.
Cristina
Guimarães was a reporter in TV Globo for 12 years. She received the
Esso award of journalism, together with Tim Lopes, for their coverage
“Druggs Fair”, shown by Jornal Nacional in 2001. She was a war
correspondent in Iraq and in Angola. She decided to leave the
broadcasting when she noticed her bosses were not worried about her
safety.
Today,
Tim Lopes’ widower, Alessandra Wagner, sues TV Globo for
responsability. According to Alessandra’s lawyer, the employer did
not guarantee his employee’s physical integrity during his task.
“Tim died because he was compelled to go back many times to the same
slum”, said Crsitina.
The
journalist felt obliged to disappear in clandestiny. She was
threatened to death by the trafica, did not count on neither brazilian
government protection nor her colleagues’ solidarity. “No one in
the Globo talked with me. They were affraid of loosing their jobs”.
She seeked help from the International Amnesty and was supported by
the USA government. She was considered “mad” for the Globo. Shw
travelled around 28 countries and lived in the interior of Rio de
Janeiro during a long period of time. All that because Cristina,
opposite to Tim, refused to go back to a place where she had been
threatened to death just to shoot images that pleased her editors. The
audience, that’s all about. Sensationalism before life. Life is
worth few, very few. Almost nothing. If there is always somebody
agreeing to be killed for work, why not to get rid of the inconvenient
ones who work for living?
Today,
the jounalist Cristina Guimarães has no fix address. Besides, she
lives with fear, stressed. She is paying a huge price for broken the
scheme. As if shw had broken the Omerta – the Mafia’s pact of
silence. “Today I fear not only the drugg dealers, I fear Globo TV.
I even fear the Globe TV more than the drugg dealers, because I am the
living evidence that they murdered Tim”, concludes Cristina.
|
|
|
