This was the headline on a lengthy business piece on the CBC.ca website on Sunday: “What a far-right Bolsonaro presidency in Brazil means for Canadian business.” The subheadline read, “Miners could benefit from relaxed regulations, as environmentalists fear growth plans will destroy the Amazon.”

The CBC then sent out promotional tweets like these: “Brazil's new president elect, Jair Bolsonaro, is a right-winger who leans toward more open markets. This could mean fresh opportunities for Canadian companies looking to invest in the resource-rich country.” “Critics have lambasted the former paratrooper for his homophobic, racist and misogynist statements, but his government could open new investment opportunities.”

An experienced correspondent, Chris Arsenault, wrote the piece. And here’s a journalistic problem. Some readers don’t understand that good reporting describes the world as it is, rather than as they wish it to be.

The complaints rolled in, mainly from people unfamiliar with business reporting, who inaccurately inferred Arsenault’s “feelings” about the facts he reported, and personalized his story on the fallout of a disastrous election.

Most news coverage now focuses on wrongs done by governments, I’ve noticed, but rarely on corporate misdeeds. It’s understandable since governments worldwide are falling like dominoes to violent authoritarianism and fascism. Ignoring the more complicated and dangerous story of corporate puppeteers may be a reflection of newsrooms shrinking as ads vanish and readers prove reluctant to subscribe and pay for journalism.

Donald Trump, like the tyrant Bolsonaro, is a scary clown but he serves a useful purpose for giant multinationals laying waste to our planet. Look at the clown! Don’t look at the dark figures skulking behind him.

This is why Naomi Klein in her great book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate saw “climate change as a battle between capitalism and the planet,” not just capitalism’s governments and the planet. Follow the money. Arsenault did that, summing up a toxic situation: hideous news for climate protection is actually great for businesses thinking only in the short-term.

Arsenault described Bolsonaro’s plan to slash environmental regulation in the Amazon rainforest and privatize some public companies. Canadian firms have invested about $11.5 billion in Brazilian mining, infrastructure, machinery, finance and technology, he wrote, which should be of interest to every Canadian with money in a mutual fund. You’re an investor too.

Arsenault discussed Canadian and Brazilian investments and backgrounded Bolsonaro’s chief economic adviser, Paulo Guedes, a sinister wisdom-of-the-market Chicagoist intent on privatization.

Worst of all, the Amazon rainforest would be opened to farming, mining and hydroelectric dams. Deforestation would begin in earnest, with terrible consequences for the environment and the Indigenous people who live there.

Arsenault reported that Bolsonaro may expel international NGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund, and will approve more mining projects, some involving Canadian companies. He ended with this: “With nearly 60 per cent of the world’s public mining companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, losses for the Amazon rainforest under Bolsonaro could spell big gains for Canadian investors.”

In other words, corporations in Canada and worldwide will do an Ivanka Trump. They will be complicit.

Complaints (I’m assuming mainly on Twitter, the idiot beacon) came in. Business coverage is wrong in itself, some suggested, and this was a crass, immoral story glorifying money. One person said correctly that the CBC’s promotional tweets failed to acknowledge that most people wouldn’t go on to read the story, just the tweet, which is true. But journalism is not aimed at non-readers.

Arsenault responded that after reading the full story, Canadians should understand where their pensions will be invested unless they complain, and that, realistically, “some investors welcome election of a man who routinely makes racist, pro-dictatorship, sexist statements if it means more extraction.”

Then, wisely, he gave up. (Everyone should give up on Twitter.)

This was just another day at the CBC, I imagine. The CBC told me that the tweets were a mistake but the election analysis piece was a “legitimate story that met CBC journalistic standards and added context to the coverage overall.” Good for the CBC.

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Much of the world is increasingly Trump-like and Bolsonaro-ish, run by vast corporate interests in hand with government. That is a catastrophe for democracy.

Don’t tell me that journalists should not say this out loud.

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