One of the current obsessions at the newspaper is use of the word “fiasco” indiscriminately for anything that doesn’t go according to plan
In his autobiography, “Magnificent Desolation,” released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, astronaut Edwin Aldrin, who along with Neil Armstrong disembarked on the satellite on July 20, 1969, tells about his father, an Air Force colonel who he calls “oppressive.”
He does not confirm a story told many times that the first words of Aldrin’s father when the son arrived back home after the Apollo 11 mission were: “Even up there you didn’t manage to be first?” But he recounted situations in which his father made it clear that second or third place obtained by his son didn’t mean much in his opinion.
Parents aren’t the only ones who exaggerate when they make demands of someone’s performance. News organizations do too. Sometimes they create enormous expectations about a public personality or something they did not do, even if results are good or even great, they classify them disproportionately.
Folha has been an example in this way. One of the current obsessions at the newspaper is use of the word “fiasco” indiscriminately for anything that doesn’t go according to plan. The term signifies a resounding failure, disastrous, vexing.
But on these pages, it serves to describe anything that doesn’t go well. Last Sunday, the headline on the business section said: “Market projection ‘fiasco’ for the first time.” What was the vexing prognostication? The federal government’s 2010 surplus stands at 2.50f the GDP instead of a 3.3 0oal.
It’s not necessary to go very deep and discuss whether it is a good practice to treat as a certainty a prediction of the market in a volatile economic environment in which expectations of the future are often wrong. It didn’t even emphasize that the finance minister reaffirmed Tuesday, in a brief note at the bottom of a graphic on an inside page, that 3.3% will be achieved.
What’s notable is that a potential surplus about 300elow forecast, even between quotation marks, would be considered a fiasco in a country that experienced fiscal deficits for decades.
In sports, fiasco is routine. The word appeared 2,213 times in a search of the newspaper’s archives. Argentina loses to Brazil in soccer or the country won’t get a medal at the world judo competition, everything is a fiasco. During the Olympics in Beijing, reader Andrei Guilherme Lopes reacted when he read in the newspaper that Jardel Gregrio had been a fiasco in the triple jump: “An athlete who takes sixth place in the biggest spotting competition on the plant is a fiasco?”
If Edward Aldrin, the father, were editor at Folha, the newspaper’s headline on July 21, 1969 would have been “Aldrin is fiasco on the moon.”
HEALTH SECTION IS NOT SUPERFLUOUS
One of the good developments at this newspaper in 2008 was the daily health page, created in October. When I analyzed it, I said that its areas of coverage get confused with the science section and the health supplement, and I lamented about the preference given to personal health topics over public health. These problems persist. On June 21, I referred to coverage on the health page and said that it often emphasizes the superfluous. I was unjust and admitted my mistake in public when I had the opportunity. This past Thursday, an important story about strokes came out, which prompted reader Octvio Pontes, a neurologist, to say, “Unfortunately, the illness has only been approached by the media when it claims famous victims,” but in this case “the topic was approached with impartiality” and depth. Since June, only once did the page deal with a topic which could be considered superfluous. In fact, it will never be read by the Bald Liberation Front, a fun group chronicled in the book shown below, nor by personalities who seek eternal youth in the film shown below.
TO READ
“Stories that Newspapers Don’t Tell,” by Moacyr Scliar, Agir Publishing, 2009 (starting at 27.57 reals, or U.S. $15.40)
TO SEE
“Death Becomes Her,” by Robert Zemeckis, with Meryl Streep, 1992 (28.90 reals)
WHAT FOLHA DID RIGHT…
SANITATION IN SO PAULO
Critical coverage by the newspaper helps to reverse the cut in funding for public sanitation
PAY TV
Good story on Sunday makes a diagnosis of the service
… AND WHERE IT DID BADLY
JUDGE SUSPENDED
The newspaper does a poor job covering the mistakes and suspension of the referee for the game between Cruzeiro and Palmeiras
CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
Constitutional amendment to increase number of city council members is approved without the newspaper prompting debate about it
HIV VACCINE
Friday’s front page does not mention advances in the fight against AIDS
LOBO ATUNES
The arts and entertainment section on Thursday again devotes space to the Portuguese writer’s romance
– Translation by John Wright
