With today’s voting, the first round of municipal elections ends. Did Folha and its main competitors cover the campaign well? Were readers who followed the race in newspapers well informed? Yes and no.
It is a given that coverage by big newspapers, mainly Folha and the Rio daily, “O Globo,” will closely monitor campaign financing and put a magnifying glass on personal enrichment by politicians.
Campaign donations have been a permanent source of corruption. It is an old phenomenon. Newspapers fulfill an important role when they pressure government authorities for more transparency and control and when they reveal concrete cases of corruption or promiscuity.
Folha exposed for the first time that the big financiers of campaigns for the left-leaning Workers Party (PT) and centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) sneak around electoral legislation and hide their donations, giving directly to the parties and keeping the money from showing up in candidate accounts.
Another old phenomenon is the enrichment of a good part of politicians as they exercise their official duties. Folha has a tradition of covering this area and has maintained it in this election by showing the growth in the assets of Gilberto Kassab, the running mate of So Paulo mayoral candidate Jos Serra.
But the biggest contribution came from “Globo,” which showed official asset statements of state legislators and city council members, complementing information with searches in local title offices and business registries and showing how politicians in Rio increased their assets quickly.
Balance
It could be said that this investigative energy was a positive point in coverage. Moreover, it exposed various serious deficiencies by journalists.
Most important was the lack of balance in following various candidates that I dealt with in three columns and do not intend to go over again.
Although I have observed Folha the most, it should be said that a lack of balance was a common point to all the three major newspapers, as can be determined by daily reading and in the survey done by the Doxa/Iuperj Laboratory (http://doxa.iuperj.br).
Marketing and intrigue
There is another point that I consider an old and serious deficiency which newspapers once again did not manage to overcome: near- total submission to intrigue, to the rules of the game set by marketers and the empty speeches by candidates.
This type of coverage ends up taking an exaggerated amount of space and at times carries a sensationalistic tone with the exchange of low blows between candidates their grimacing, for their unreachable promises, and for the insignificant details that disappeared soon.
The newspapers did not manage to impose questions on the candidates that allowed readers to know what they really intended to do. The big questions were left out, except, in the case of So Paulo, those concerning the city’s debt or another discussion about health, education and transportation.
The structural problems of the city were hardly discussed. The most delicate topics – growth of slums, dominance of drug traffickers, expansion of services into areas currently excluded, taxes, economic fitness of the city, and employment – were avoided or treated in a superficial, demagogic way. And the newspapers did not cover this.
It was the same with the massacres of street people. More than 10,000 people walk around the city without a home or job. It is a complex question which is not resolved with palliatives. How do you confront it? The deaths were treated as a police matter, the candidates ignored the problem, Folha held a superficial debate, and that was it.
Second round
Coverage by newspapers reveals another deficiency: the inability on a daily basis to associate political with economic news, seeking a connection between what is related, in the case of Folha, in the national news section, with what is in the business section and with what ends up coming out in the daily news. It’s as if the election were disconnected from the political and economic facts and the administrative decisions.
I asked the editor of national news, Fernando de Barros e Silva, responsible for the Elections 2004 section, for a preview of what he intends to do for the second round. I transcribe: “The newspaper should deepen coverage at the same time it criticizes and balances the main topics of administration and the proposals of the candidates, seeking to clarify the merit of the questions that arise in the conversation between them. I predict the most lively campaign in So Paulo since the country returned to democracy. The political analysis of the impact of the election in So Paulo and the correlation of forces that would come out of the ballot boxes in a national sense will have to be deepened. Their escape point is the race to succeed President Luiz Incio da Silva in 2006, and the newspaper has the duty to illuminate it from that point on.”
I sincerely hope that it succeeds. But I believe it will be difficult. Newspapers should ask if the model of electoral coverage that we have practiced for years is not exhausted because it carries superficial, disposable news.
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INTERVIEW
“Lack of discussion”
Fernando Azevedo is a political scientist, professor at So Carlos Federal University and coordinator of the Anpocs Media and Election Group (National Association of Post-Graduate and Research in Social Sciences).
Ombudsman – Did newspapers cover the first round well?
Fernando Azevedo – They covered the electoral race and the rhetorical competition between the candidates. I believe that this impoverishes coverage because it does not widen the discussions about the questions concerning the city. Newspapers cede a counterpoint of their own agenda to the agendas of the candidates, which impose discussion of a public agenda concerning issues in the city. This was missing. I see these problems in news coverage as much as in the op-ed pages. The electoral season is a critical moment in democracies because citizens have an opportunity to discuss political and administrative proposals. I believe that daily newspapers have a greater ability to suggest public agendas and set the agenda for other news organizations, such as television. For this reason, I believe it is fundamental for newspapers to offer a counterpoint agenda for discussion that is not the same as that of the candidates.
Ombudsman – Was this election different from others? If yes, did the newspapers know how to capture these differences?
Azevedo – There was nothing new. The discussion was within the municipal framework. It was a more administrative discussion. It was not nationalized, except in the end, when the political godfathers appeared, in the case of So Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin and President Lula. It was also centered on the biographies and personalities of the candidates.
Ombudsman – Were readers who followed the election in newspapers well informed?
Azevedo – They were reasonably informed about the campaigns, but not in relation to the discussions about programs.
Ombudsman – Did the newspapers in So Paulo carry out balanced coverage?
Azevedo – I believe that in the election of 2000 the balance was more visible. There was relative balance, which was clear when you separate opinion from electoral coverage. In this, there was not.
Ombudsman – To what do you attribute this?
Azevedo – I don’t know exactly. In the case of “O Estado de So Paulo,” I believe that was an editorial option to support Serra’s candidacy. In the case of Folha, I believe that the logic is different. Folha bet on its attitude as a supervisor of power, of watchdog. I believe that was exaggerated. Many times it took on the agenda of the adversaries of incumbent Mayor Marta Suplicy. The newspaper should have considered this. It’s true, and it must have increased, that the mayor’s personality caused critical stories.
Translation by John Wright
