Folha gave a gift to its readers by putting on four roundtable discussions to which the main candidates for president in the October election agreed to submit themselves. It was the last group of interviews with them before the (mandatory) free campaign ads start on TV. In an unprecedented move, readers could also pose questions. The rules, minimum and basic, guaranteed ample freedom for interviewers and those being interviewed.
With few exceptions, radio, TV, Internet and newspapers covered the events. There was a lot of curiosity surrounding them. That helped the newspapers image both with its readers and the media in general.
But its necessary to delve into a deeper political and journalistic evaluation of this series of meetings. Up to what point did they meet expectations? What was their singular contribution, compared with other similar initiatives?
In the story about the roundtable last Sunday, reader Eduardo Guimares summarized in a personal way that he basically supported the idea:
I had the expectation that it would manage to yield more than you see on TV. I expect to see more objective and less generic answers, surrounded by a more demanding public. I also hope to see politicking put aside because citizens have little interest in it.
Those who followed the interviews in their entirety on Folhas on-line version or its printed version can bring themselves up to date about the candidates. But it is difficult to assert that Folha has met the expectations summarized by the reader. To the contrary, it shows that candidates, with their professional advisers and marketeers, were much more prepared to deal with Folha than the newspaper was to deal with them effectively at the roundtable.
Interviewing is not attacking or humiliating, much less submitting someone to a police-style interrogation or a torture session.
Journalists are not candidates. They cant, nor should they, confront the person being interviewed as an adversary to be defeated. Meanwhile, at the same time that a politician can show proposals and ideas, the journalist needs to be capable of extracting something besides generalities and make them reveal the various black boxes (an expression used by journalist Boris Casoy) that everyone in public life hides from the public.
The art of interviewing, an important moment in journalism, consists of exactly this. It is a formal, professional game with its own liturgy, principles and techniques whose relevance and nature of public service are accentuated when the hot seat has a candidate instead of a writer or pop star. Because of this, the roundtables were journalistically disappointing.
Front-runner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the left-leaning Workers Party (PT) on Monday seemed to be as willing as if he were in his own home. Up to that point, it was fine. The problem was that most of the time Folha also seemed to be in his home for some kind of informal chat like a friend coming over for tea.
In terms of planning strategy, the newspaper was unable to pierce the armor of abstract formulations that the candidate, by political option, has been maintaining throughout his campaign. There were no questions about topics considered sensitive, such as setbacks in PT municipal administrations or the supposed bribery scheme in Santo Andr (a So Paulo suburb) that has consumed pages and pages of this newspaper.
Obligatory questions about embarrassing topics without being ill mannered actually come more from readers such as the one about how the PT leader earns his living. So, as columnist Marcelo Coelho wrote in an analysis which appeared in the same edition as the meeting, on Tuesday, it wasnt really a roundtable.
Sameness
The events with Ciro Gomes (the presidential candidate for the Peoples Socialist Party, once governor of the northeastern state of Cear and former finance minister) on Tuesday and Anthony Garotinho (the presidential candidate for the Brazilian Socialist Party, former Rio de Janeiro governor) on Wednesday didnt have this air of informal conversation. There was tension and friction.
The result, for the reader, however, was the same: predictable answers, sameness, superficiality, attacking the same targets as always.
These two cases show that its not a problem involving the degree of aggressiveness or springing traps with surprising gotcha questions. Its clear that this phase of journalism has already passed. Rather, this concerns preparation by the newspaper for the interview, nothing more or nothing less than someone who could be president in a few months and that, furthermore, has a lot of preparation for this.
Again, with rare exceptions, the newspaper simply did not manage to formulate detailed questions with new topics or arguments, backed by data and documentation, stories from Folha or research as a way to obligate the candidates to modify their pre-programmed script.
Once more, it came from the audience. In the case of Ciro, there were questions which, despite leaving out detail, made him disclose significant information in the interview (like the one about his untrue statement that he had studied his whole life in public schools).
Once more, the candidates put on their show.
Present
The newspaper yesterday reported on the roundtable with Jos Serra (President Henrique Cardosos handpicked candidate representing the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party and its allies) had a similar climate to the one with Lula.
On its face, it emphasized the importance of speaking more about the future than the past (an evaluation of the Cardoso government). The candidate also managed to forget as much about the suffocating present as he could.
It was necessary for a reader, after almost two hours of interview, to pose the most intriguing question to the former Cabinet minister and senator: Why was he having such a hard time making headway in the public opinion polls? (He is a distant third behind Lula and Ciro).
The political importance of the topic was expressed all week in stories about the crisis in his campaign, and all you need to do is look at a Datafolha survey today to see it. Sure, he had to discuss his platform and the future. But, how is he dealing with this matter?
Serra, meanwhile, was sympathetically evasive with a not-unprecedented phrase (practice is practice, the game is the game) and left it at that.
Disappointment
Readers who follow this column might remember that on March 31, I mentioned the series of interviews made with candidates on the show Live Roundtable on the Culture TV Network. The evaluation then was very similar to these roundtables.
The difference is that in the previous ones, the journalists came from various news organizations. It diluted the responsibility. This time it only involves Folha, not the individual journalists, but the institution.
It bears repeating that the candidates have had years to prepare for this election. The newspaper, on the other hand, has shown that it isnt sufficiently prepared for this level of innovative initiative, even one that it created. This is the result despite the flexible rules no predetermined amount of time for questions and answers and the experiences on Live Roundtable or the interviews on the Globo TV network that I mentioned here last week, which generated costs for the candidates and benefits for the network.
Let me return to reader Eduardo Guimares. In an e-mail he sent his impressions about the roundtables that he saw: … after thinking it over quite a bit, I didnt like them. What you can get out of them again … was much less than I expected.
Despite this, he still optimistically concluded: Next week there are more, the candidates for governor.
