Brazil has more than 200 million people and a Jewish community of roughly 100,000. Yet much of what Brazilians read about Israel and the war in Gaza is not originally reported here. It comes from international news agencies and major foreign media outlets whose reports, headlines and framing are reproduced by Brazilian news organizations, often reaching millions of readers within hours.
This creates a powerful effect: When international reporting is accurate, Brazilian readers benefit from the work of news organizations with correspondents and resources that local outlets could hardly replicate. But when the original reporting is wrong, incomplete or prematurely presented as fact, the error travels just as efficiently. Brazilian media does not necessarily create the distortion; often, it imports it.
I have spent years working at the end of this information chain. There is an expression in Portuguese, enxugar gelo—literally, “wiping ice”—for an endless effort whose results seem destined to disappear. I chose it as the title of my book about monitoring Brazilian media coverage of Israel and urging news organizations to correct inaccurate headlines, misleading images, and factual omissions and distortions.
The English edition is appropriately called A Sisyphean Task.
I am a journalist and the CEO of a public relations agency in Brazil; this dual role has made me particularly sensitive to the difference between the two professions. Brazilian journalist Felipe Moura Brasil summarized it perfectly in the foreword to my book: “Press relations has a side. Journalism does not.” A PR professional represents a client or a cause; a journalist’s first allegiance should be to the facts.
He also pointed out a paradox in the cases documented in my book: I never concealed my perspective or the fact that much of my work was done while handling communications for an educational institution focused on Israel. Yet I often found myself performing a basic journalistic function—checking claims, seeking context and demanding evidence—while parts of the media, voluntarily or involuntarily, amplified narratives originating with Hamas.
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, this problem has become impossible to ignore. The Al-Ahli Hospital explosion provided an early example. The allegation that Israel had bombed the hospital and killed hundreds spread around the world before the evidence was established, and Brazilian media reproduced it. Later evidence pointed instead to a failed Palestinian rocket and cast serious doubt on the initial casualty claims. By then, however, the first version had already traveled around the world. Corrections rarely have the reach or emotional impact of the original accusation.
Not every distortion, however, is imported. Brazilian media also produces its own distortions. Indeed, the line between journalism and activism has increasingly blurred. At times, facts that reinforce a particular ideological interpretation receive prominence, while those that complicate it are minimized, contextualized differently or subjected to greater skepticism.
The problem goes well beyond commentators describing Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip as a “genocide,” presenting a grave and contested legal accusation as though it were an established judicial finding. Claims originating from Hamas or authorities operating under its rule have often been reported with insufficient skepticism or attribution, while Israeli accounts are presented as claims requiring verification. Casualty figures, responsibility for explosions, allegations of deliberate starvation and the conduct of Israeli forces have all become part of this broader battle over the narrative.
I now devote more of my time not to correcting the narrative, but to participating in its construction.
This is particularly consequential regarding television, where the boundary between reporting and commentary can become difficult for audiences to distinguish. Interpretations delivered by prominent journalists can reach millions of Brazilians with the institutional authority of a major network behind them.
The problem with this is not that journalists do not adopt Israel’s perspective. It is that journalism becomes something closer to advocacy when facts are selected, emphasized or scrutinized according to whether they support a preferred narrative. The same evidentiary standard should apply to every belligerent.
One change in Brazilian coverage that I consider particularly significant concerns Gaza casualty figures. Early in the war, reports often presented them simply as numbers. Today, it is much more common to see the essential attribution to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas.
That may seem like a small detail. It is not. It does not mean the figures are necessarily false or should not be reported. It means readers deserve to know their source, particularly when independent verification is difficult. The same standard should apply to information supplied by the Israeli government or the IDF. Attribution is not disbelief; it is journalism. Readers should be told what is known, what remains unverified and who is making the claim.
The consequences of distorted narratives do not necessarily remain confined to the news cycle. CONIB, Brazil’s Jewish umbrella organization, documented 989 antisemitic incidents in the country in 2025, a 149% increase from 397 in 2022. It would be simplistic to attribute that rise to media coverage alone. But narratives that demonize Israel can spill over into hostility toward Jews who have no connection to the decisions of the Israeli government. In a country where Jews represent less than 0.05% of the population, the way Israel and the war are portrayed in mainstream media matters well beyond the newsroom.
Over the years, I have obtained corrections from major Brazilian outlets involving headlines, photos and missing context. Those victories matter, but eventually, I realized the limits of spending most of my energy correcting what had already been published. A newspaper can correct a headline, identify the source of a casualty figure or add missing context to a photo. An interpretation, a television commentary or an opinion column is different. It cannot simply be “corrected” because one disagrees with it. The answer to an argument is another argument.
That realization changed my strategy. I still challenge factual errors and ask for corrections when they are warranted, but I now devote much more of my time not merely to correcting the narrative, but to participating in its construction. My op-eds have appeared in some of Brazil’s most influential newspapers and opinion platforms, including O Globo, Folha de S.Paulo, Estadão and Poder360, as well as international publications such as The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel and The Algemeiner. For me, these are not merely bylines. They are valuable spaces where public opinion is shaped and where perspectives on Israel and antisemitism that might otherwise be absent can enter the mainstream debate.
There is an important distinction between advocacy disguised as reporting and opinion journalism that openly presents an argument. An op-ed does not pretend to be neutral. I have a perspective, and I do not hide it. But having a point of view does not relieve an opinion writer of the obligation to build an argument on facts. If Israel deserves criticism, that criticism should be based on what Israel actually did. Palestinian suffering should be fully reported, but it does not need exaggeration to deserve compassion. Hamas’s claims should be subjected to the same scrutiny as Israel’s. The standard should not depend on whose side a source represents, but on whether the evidence supports the assertion.
Writing only for Jewish or pro-Israel audiences that already agree with us is not enough. If facts or perspectives are missing from the debate, we need to bring them into the places where people who may disagree with us are reading, watching and thinking. That is what occupying these editorial spaces means to me: Not replacing one form of propaganda with another, but ensuring that another evidence-based perspective becomes part of the public conversation.
This has become even more important because today’s news does not disappear with tomorrow’s edition. It enters search engines, Wikipedia, databases and, increasingly, the information ecosystem from which artificial intelligence systems construct responses to queries. A distortion repeated often enough can become more than a misleading headline; it can become part of the infrastructure of knowledge. For years, my principal question was what the media had gotten wrong and how I could get it corrected. I still ask that question, but now I also ask what we are putting into the public record ourselves.
Felipe was right: I have a side, and I do not hide it. But I am not asking journalists to take my side. I am asking them to take journalism’s side—the side of the facts. I will continue enxugando gelo when necessary, but I have learned that correcting the record is only part of the task. We also have to occupy the spaces where the record is being written.
