Newspapers are covering the disturbing national scene with a focus on two aspects: accusations of corruption, as well as investigations that stimulate them, and the political crisis in the administration of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva.
Are they covering these things well? They are experiencing natural difficulties in the journalistic investigation (always difficult when dealing with corruption), dependent almost entirely on regular doses of accusations provided by Congressman Roberto Jefferson and, in my opinion, they regularly err when they resist providing space for versions by the accused.
I dealt with this in my internal critique on Thursday. It is inexplicable that Folha, after conducting a third interview with Jefferson on Tuesday which it published Thursday, was not willing on Wednesday to check some information he provided with so much detail or to hear from members of Congress and government officials involved in new accusations involving electric utility Furnas. Surely, there was no lack of time nor staff for this work to check and do other interviews.
These procedures should become part of the newspaper’s routine, and at this level of coverage, I don’t see any arguments that could justify forgetting them. The accused and readers have a right to see various versions of the details exposed that are still obscure.
A third aspect
There is, moreover, a third aspect to this crisis that has been done badly or simply left behind, the evaluation of the origin and its institutional roots, like the debate that the search for solutions for governability and transparency engender.
The role of newspapers will be complete when, besides reporting and investigating, they become willing to open their pages to the regular debate about the future of the political model that we are building. It is not an academic debate, even though it presently seems to be restricted to columnists, opinion pieces and special weekend editions.
Congress is near to approving what has been referred to as political reform, which includes four points: party loyalty, a closed candidate list, barrier clauses to limit the number of parties, and public financing for campaigns.
There is no consensus on these topics. There is, however, a general impression among those who follow the Brazilian political scene that these points don’t resolve the problems of governability and, even less, of corruption and impunity.
Folha already gave its opinion about reform that is supposed to be approved. The title of its editorial on Sunday, June 26, summed up what the newspaper defends: “Mistaken reform.” This does not mean, however, that the newspaper should relegate the debate. To the contrary. It is time to open its pages to a deepened, systematic and mainly pluralistic debate for the nation.
The discussion is restricted, up to now, to opinion pieces published Saturday on the op/ed page, special interviews on Monday, and sporadically in the Sunday magazine (such as last Sunday) or a special debate on the national pages. It is insufficient because it does not encompass the group of problems that are at stake nor the diversity of diagnostics, analyses and suggestions available.
I am not referring to only giving space to the opinions of experts and politicians, but to contemplate movements and social organizations and including the common citizen and newspaper reader in the discussion. Disappointment with politics and politicians is nothing new for us. But there is no doubt that frustration and skepticism have grown with the latest scandals. The sensation that is totally mistaken and that nothing works out quickly becomes a certainty that there is no solution.
News organizations have the obligation to investigate rigorously and cover with a magnifying glass any inside information about the crisis, but these obligations should not serve as a pretext to leave space empty for the debate and ideas.
Folha’s mistakes
There are two pieces of good news about Folha: it is correcting its errors in information better and has been doing it more quickly. The comparison between the first half of this year and last year shows a growth of 4 0n mistakes corrected. There were 555 before, and now there were 576. That is an average of 96 corrections per month, three per day.
It is not good that Folha is making more mistakes, but the increase in the number of mistakes corrected is great. It surely commits more mistakes than it corrects, but the willingness to recognize them is a sign of respect to readers and sources.
It is not enough, however, to recognize mistakes. It is necessary to correct them as quickly as possible so their consequences can be minimized.
In the first half of last year, the newspaper took an average of nine days to run a correction. There was an effort to decrease this time in the second half, since the time in 2004 fell to eight days, as I pointed out Jan. 2. In the first half (of this year), the time declined even more, to seven days. But it is still a lot of time. There are departments that take an average of 12 days to recognize a mistake. That is the case in the daily news section, which drastically decreased the number of corrections (from 93 to 75) and increased the amount of time that it takes to publish them.
The newspaper’s front page, the most noticed part of the edition, corrects one mistake per week and takes an average of three days to recognize them.
Pope and “allowance”
To illustrate the types of mistakes detected by Folha in the first half of the year I chose two topics. The first was the agony, death and replacement of John Paul II. The newspaper does not have systematic coverage of religion nor specialized reporters on the beat. For this reason, as proved by the mistakes they made, they know little about the Catholic Church.
I counted 29 mistakes about Catholicism and the church, 24 of which were committed during coverage of the pope. One was really serious and had nothing to do with specialized knowledge: the newspaper reported, in its headline on the front page April 2, that “John Paul II worsens and loses consciousness,” when he had not lost consciousness. The mistake was corrected the next day.
A good part of the corrections (10) referred to ages and mistaken functions of the cardinals. But the newspaper also made mistakes in church terms and details of their rites. Also on the first page, it called the consistory, which is the meeting of cardinals presided by the pope, the conclave that would elect the new pontiff.
Another focus of mistakes I found was in coverage about the “allowances” (money paid to government supporters). I counted 28 corrections, nine of which referred to parties or the functions of members of Congress of the Senate.
In remarks that ran Thursday, Congressman Roberto Jefferson spoke with irony to a news organization which mistakenly referred to the former head of the Postal Service, Maurcio Marinho, as the director. Folha committed the same mistake three times.
At least two mistakes could be considered serious: on June 15, it reported that the meetings in the room reserved at the presidential palace for Slvio Pereira dealt with the alleged “allowance,” when in an interview he gave to Folha, Jefferson said that he discussed government jobs. And, on June 26, a story asserted that the president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, was cited on a tape as a supposed agent of bribes, when he appeared as a friend of politician Antnio Pedreira.
Translation by John Wright
