Three Sundays from now we will hold elections for city governments. In So Paulo, the polls indicate that right now the race is undefined between incumbent Mayor Marta Suplicy of the Workers Party (PT) and former Cabinet minister Jos Serra of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). Behind those two are former Mayor and Gov. Paulo Maluf of the Progressive Party, and trailing way behind is former mayor Luiza Erundina of the Brazilian Socialist Party.
Since Aug. 17, when the free campaign ads started on TV, Folha has increased space gradually for electoral coverage. Is it doing a good job?
I see two serious problems: There is still a lack of balance, an aspect with which I dealt in my May 30 column (“Readers pressure for balance”), and in coverage centered on the agendas of the candidates and their electoral statements.
I will deal initially with the second point and use the most recent editions (from Saturday, Sept. 4 through Friday, Sept. 10) as a source for analysis.
The period could be summarized this way: many quotation marks and little reporting. I refer to stories that could help readers understand the context of the campaign, analyze the problems of the city, and judge electoral promises. The newspaper, and this is not a fault only of Folha, ends up falling into the candidates’ traps and keeps coverage based on stupid statements and exchanges of insults.
That’s what the Sept. 4 edition was like. Serra attacked the PT, Maluf attacked the PT and PSDB. Jos Genoino, president of the PT, attacked Gov. Geraldo Alckmin, and that is how things stayed because nothing was important.
In compensation, the main news of the week, and maybe of the campaign, was the speech that Suplicy gave Wednesday saying that a Serra victory would threaten political stability in this country. It was not understood immediately by the newspaper. The “fear speech,” as it came to be called, as well as simultaneous changes in the speeches by Maluf and Erundina, indicate that the campaign has taken new directions. What are they and why? Through Friday, the newspaper had not deciphered it.
Balance
The bigger problem that I see, however, is the differentiated treatment that the newspaper gives to the candidates. Coverage of Suplicy’s administration and campaign is more critical and negative than coverage of her principal adversary, Jos Serra.
I don’t believe that electoral news must have perfect balance. Furthermore, I think this is impossible. Publication of news can’t be subordinated to mathematical formulas. Following an election and administration demands critical vigilance because public resources and the future of the city are at stake. But this does not mean that the newspaper should not seek the maximum balance. And I believe that this has not been happening.
I will go back over the survey taken every 15 days by the Doxa Laboratory of Research in Political Communication and Public Opinion at Rio de Janeiro University Institute of Research (Iuperj). The survey, coordinated by professor Alessandra Ald of the University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj) can be accessed at http://doxa.iuperj.br.
Suplicy and Serra are getting a similar amount of space in Folha. The imbalance appears when the survey classifies the stories analyzed as positive, negative or neutral for the candidate’s image.
Over the past 15 days, news about the PT candidate was sharply divided, but with a predominance of unfavorable references: 360f the stories analyzed were negative; 33eutral and 310ositive. In the past 15 days, 54% were neutral, 260ositive and 20egative. Therefore, there was more balance. Since it began its evaluations on April 29, the news about Suplicy been more positive than negative in only two periods.
The Serra candidacy had more favorable coverage after all is said and done. In the past 15-day period, 390f the stories about him were positive against 25egative and 36eutral. The previous week, the numbers were 22% (positive), 19% (negative) and 59% (neutral). Even in the periods in which more negative than positive stories appeared, the difference was always very small (22egative against 190ositive), with the exception of the period between July 22 and Aug. 4, when there were 29egative and 160ositive.
Critical rigor
Where Folha’s coverage is predominantly negative involves the municipal administration. Of the 51 stories published in that period which referred to Suplicy as mayor, 61% were negative against 25eutral and 140ositive.
When I wrote the May 30 column, 620f the references to Suplicy as mayor were negative. After the column, by coincidence or not, this index was falling until the middle of June, before the official start of the campaign, with more positive references (39%) than negative (22%). But, starting in July, the news reverted to being crushingly adverse.
Folha is not alone in this distortion. The same survey done by “O Estado de So Paulo” in the latest 15-day period showed an even more unbalanced landscape. Suplicy, as mayor, got 59egative stories against 40ositive. As a candidate, 39% were negative against 240ositive. And Serra, during the same period, had 480ositive stories against 13egative. But this is no consolation.
As I said, I don’t believe that the newspaper should apply a mathematical formula. Critical coverage is the nature of journalism and it is part of the tradition at Folha. The ideal is to find a point of equilibrium which allows readers to understand that the newspaper is being equally rigorous toward all the candidates and administrations without privilege or persecution.
FROM THE EDITOR
“A little beyond the numbers”
From the editor of national news, Fernando de Barros e Silva, who is responsible for electoral coverage, I received the following:
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“Monitoring such as this by Iuperj, a serious institute, is important because it helps us improve discussions that we seek to have daily at the newspaper. These horizontal measurements, however, despite their relative validity, have obvious limits.
“We don’t reveal, for example, the importance and the impact of each story in the course of coverage. I am certain that at Folha there have been more stories that are uncomfortable for the PSDB candidate up to now. I will cite three:
“The revelation that the assets of Serra’s running mate, Gilberto Kassab, grew more than 300 0n four years, part of that time as a secretary in the administration of former Mayor Celso Pitta; the revelation that the PSDB assumed a debt of 3.5 million reals (US $1.2 million at the current exchange rate) left by Serra in his presidential campaign; and even the revelation that Gov. Alckmin favored cities with PSDB administrations in the transfer of discretionary funds.
“The newspaper showed, besides this, how the PT and PSDB camouflaged part of the financing of their candidates, with donations formally computed for the parties but passed along to the campaigns, without being registered in electoral committees. Contractors involved in no-bid contracts at educational institutions, for example, gave the PT 2.5 million reals (US $ 860,000 at the current exchange rate) between 2002 and 2003.
“The ombudsman’s analysis might not consider the way it should the fact that the PT is in power in So Paulo. And what the richest campaign in the country does.”
Translation by John Wright
