5 things about Brazil which are just plain wrong!

Brazil is under the microscope and with the World Cup only days away, here are a few things that really annoy me about all the UK media coverage. I've been going to Brazil regularly for over twenty years and I speak reasonable Portuguese, so I'm not writing this simply on the basis I went to Rio for a week's holiday.

1. At number one - cliched, sloppy journalism which rolls out the same old 'favela stories' which one has seen a million times before. Gun running, drug dealing, violence - ok yes it's there but what percentage of the Brazilian population do you think live in favelas? - 60%, 30%, 20%? No, less than 6%. It's like portraying a picture of Britain by going to the most dysfunctional council estate you can find! The real story in Brazil over the last ten years is the huge growth in American style gated communities and the burgeoning middle class but have I seen one iota of coverage of this? - not on your nelly - probably because it wouldn't make sensationalist television!

2. Brazil is not Rio! It's not even the biggest city in Brazil but all the media coverage seems to be fixated with this city. Ok, it's beautiful, has extraordinary geography and the Cariocas are certainly an interesting bunch but there is more to Brazil than Rio - ask any Paulistano! (the inhabitants of Sao Paulo).

3. The BBC Today programme came from Sao Paulo this morning - so well done BBC for not sending them to Rio, but two things: could Evan Davis call it Sao ('sow') Paulo, not 'San', and could he stop sounding so surprised that he hasn't found monkeys roaming the streets and drop the condescending tone.

4. Brazil is a big country, so could all the English football pundits get it through their thick skulls that it's winter in the South! This fixation with the temperature is fine if you are talking about Manaus or Recife but Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre will be cooler than London - even Rio can get a little chilly in June!

5. And finally Brazil has some of the largest and most sophisticated companies in the world, Inbev - the largest beer company and  Embraer - the third largest manufacturer of passenger jets in the world to name but two. Oh yes, and as of two years ago it overtook the UK economy in size, so let's stop sounding quite so colonial and imperialist.

The media has got one thing right - they are a hell of a lot better at Football than us!