CNN Brasil - Covid cash assistance paycheck malfeasances in Brazil

2021

CNN Brasil – Covid cash assistance paycheck malfeasances in Brazil

Country/area: Brazil

Organisation: CNN Brasil

Organisation size: Big

Cover letter:

Hello, my name is Cecília do Lago, im a data journalist from Brazil. I have three years working full time as data journalist. I started at Estadão Dados the data journalism team of the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. After, i came to TV Broadcast CNN Brasil. Data journalism is very proeminent in Brazil but still at start.

Using data journalists principles i show to the public a quantitative way to see the politcs, education, unequalty, crime and elections. Our team made a map that show for the first time, how vote almost (70%) every neighborhood in Brasil at 2018 elections. Experts uses our maps to study the phomenal victory of the actual president, Jair Bolsonaro. We show, using a map, were are each phone robbert in the city of Sao Paulo for two year, showing that the robbery problem is widespread even at poorest areas of the city. This map was the first infograpich coverpage of a newspaper in Brasil, in 2017. Also, we made another map, that reveal the story of a little girl in a countryside small city at one of the poorest regions of Brazil. She is one of twelve children that study at the best school of Brazil in teaching letters to the children. Her parents cannot read or write, but they gave some books for her and she teachs them how to read and write. The family is very very poor. The small city has the best numbes on teaching letters, as part of a state, that, year by year, increses the education rates besides being a poor state. That state, Ceará, is rising above unequalty by education and changing the shape of the future of an entire generation, and have best education than the richest state of Brazil, São Paulo.

Me and my colleagues at CNN Brasil, Luiz Fernando Toledo and Pedro Duran, made this series about emergency pandemic paychecks, to bring light to this matter that affect one in three brazilians. By the importance of the subject, we think be considered by the Sigma Awards.

Thank you very much,

Description of portfolio:

This is a serial story about wrongdoings in brazilian covid emergency paychecks. All the stories were made using public database on the covid paychecks and other public bases, like the military, the public workers and the entrepreneur linked to enterprises hired to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Our data team, me and Luiz Fernando Toledo, and the TV reporters Pedro Duran, Roberta Russo, and the fact checker Giovanna Bronze reveal some situations that show error and misconduct on public policies about the pandemic. I get the data and analysis, Luiz Fernando locate and talk with the persons and Pedro Duran, Roberta Russo, and Giovanna Bronze confront the receivers.

The first story is about 28 thousand military man that received the emergency paycheck that is not allowded to anyone that have a government job or full time job. The story show that the government made payments automatically without check the rules of the paychecks. The situation made noise on the press and, more than one month later, the government didn’t correct the situation yet. The second story is about the government admiting the wrongdoing and working on the corrections. The third story is a prequel for the fourth. Is about the amount of money the states and federal government spend with the pandemic.

The fourth story show the worst situation. Some people, that own the enterprises that fight againt the pandemic, some with million dollars contracts, were receiving the emergency paychecks as they don’t have work or nothing to eat. One of them seems to be a case of corruption becausa the enterprise have a millionaire contract and it’s to small to fullfill the job. His owner admits that received the paycheck and argue that he was in need, because the enterprese was not his.

The last story is a follow from the first. After two months, 9,5 million reais still was in the pockets of government workers that shoud never received the paycheck at the first place. Some of them received three times.