The heating up of the campaign leading to the October general election and the performance of the press with the topic during the week required another look.
The candidate of the left-leaning Workers Party (PT), Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, officially launched his platform on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Jose Serra, the nominee of President Fernando Henrique Cardosos Brazilian Social Democracy Party, brought together 15 state governors. The Brazilian Socialist Party had a pro-evangelical inflection in its strategy to capture votes.
The main phenomenon in recent days, however, is Ciro Gomes of the Peoples Socialist Party. (He was once the governor of the northeastern state of Cear and is a former finance minister.) It was the result of his rise in the public opinion polls by potential voters among other motives that financial markets became agitated, heads rolled at campaign headquarters, business leaders became more curios about the candidate and newspapers sought, each in their own way, to deal with the hurricane.
O Estado de So Paulo, which does not hide its support for Serra, coined in a headline on Friday the term that was missing to sum up the situation: Dollar breaks 3-real barrier with help from the Ciro effect.
The Ciro effect was expressed, according to the newspaper, by the rumors that circulated in currency exchanges and market players referring to the survey by the Ibope polling institute that came out Thursday on the evening TV news with a positive result, once more, for the Workers Front candidate.
On that same Friday, right below the headline, Estado ran the headline Ciro beats Lula in runoff, Ibope shows. (If no candidate obtains a majority in the October election, the top two head into a runoff.)
The survey also got a strong headline on the front page of the Rio daily O Globo (Ibope: Ciro would beat Lula in runoff) and in the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil (Ciro beats Lula in second round).
This survey, as a reminder, points to continuity in Ciros growth, an unprecedented scenario in which he would beat Lula in a hypothetical runoff, as well as a new decline for Serra, which puts him in a technical tie for third place with Rio Gov. Anthony Garotinho of the Brazilian Socialist Party.
Well then, the only one among the major newspapers in the country to not publish the data from this survey on its front page was Folha, practically repeating the position adopted in the previous week, when Ciro first passed Serra, a fact that I touched on last Sunday.
Change
Until the 2000 elections, this newspaper limited itself to publishing the surveys of its own institute, Datafolha. This time, however, it has decided to also report other surveys, with an emphasis on the ones by Ibope and Vox Populi.
There is at least one simple reason for the change: The quantity of surveys by Datafolha has been drastically reduced. To give an idea, only in July 1998 did the institute produce three national surveys; this year, the last, already displaced Serra with 20%, Ciro with 18% came out in Folha on July 7.
The question is: If the newspaper decided to publish other surveys and it should do it even critically when necessary, as occurred with the story last Tuesday about the methods of the survey by Vox Populi why not treat them with the necessary emphasis that they merit?
In the case at hand (increased support for Ciro), I formulate some hypotheses:
- The corporate interest of the company, which owns Datafolha, supersedes reader interest;
- The other surveys are not reliable;
- The growth of Ciro and the fall of Serra are not relevant enough to put on the newspapers front page;
- Folha minimized the results because of a supposed anti-Ciro political leaning in its editorial position.
It would be easy to dismiss items b and c if the other institutes didnt have a minimal amount of credibility. In that case, nothing about their numbers would be published and the columnists in Folha, as well as the stories in the newspaper, should not base their stories, as they do, on these data (since those of Datafolha, unfortunately, are outdated).
As for the relevance of the news, all you need to do is look at what happens in the market, executive suites and campaign headquarters to notice it.
While items a (defense of Datafolha) and d (anti-Ciro attitude) are short and to the point, they simply are not consistent with the newspapers tradition. This, without even mentioning the historic credibility of Datafolha, clearly eliminates such protection.
In other words, two are rolled into one: Either Folha decided in recent editions during the Ciro hurricane to leave behind its principles of absolute privilege for the news, pluralism and criticism, or it makes editorial decisions based on minor journalistic impulses and, in this sense, is unsustainable to its readers.
Hot plates
The topic that generated the most messages to the ombudsman during the week was the misunderstanding that occurred on Friday, July 19, during a lunch at Folha between Lula and Folhas editor-in-chief, Otavio Frias Filho.
According to the story in the newspaper on Thursday, Lula decided to leave the place where the event was being held when he felt irritated by two questions made with vehemence by Frias Filho (one about the candidates intellectual preparation Lula did not attend college and another about his partys alliance with the Liberal Party).
The incident was revealed at the beginning of the week in three political columns (with relatively limited penetration). On Wednesday, O Globo published a story about the matter, including declarations by the editor-in-chief. Until Thursdays edition, Folha limited itself to reporting Lulas visit and the lunch, as is customary, in a political roundup on Saturday.
The existence of these meetings, a habit of influential newspapers around the world, is legitimate. Its part of the relationship between the company which edits the publication and authorities (political, intellectual, economic, cultural, scientific, etc.). The result of this practice is a journalistic product that better informs readers.
At the same time, it should come as no surprise that there is sometimes harshness between journalists and authorities, host and guests, and it would obviously be lamentable when this is extrapolated.
But the practical consequences of this would only be ominous for readers if the verbal blows are translated afterward in a change of the editorial position of the news organization.
Report or not
There were readers who were indignant over the attitude of the editor-in-chief. Some took Lulas side, while others wondered why Folha did not report the fracas immediately. There were those who lamented that the newspaper reported the incident at all, since it was about a squabble at a private event whose contents the newspaper promised not to divulge.
In strictly journalistic terms, however, what is most relevant to discuss here is if and when Folha should (or not) have given its readers knowledge about what occurred. As I wrote in my internal critique on Wednesday, I think that the so-called off the record policy of these meetings, a commitment made by the newspaper to its guests, should be maintained.
Its only when this initial privacy is maintained that important topics of interest to readers will be brought up and can be investigated. For this reason, I believe it was correct that Folha did not make its private conversation public.
Confronted with the leaking of information, however, even by political columnists with limited penetration, it becomes obligatory to make things clear to readers. And this should have been done, I believe, on Wednesday without waiting for O Globo to report it.
Aside from the delay, the story presented on Thursday about what occurred (preceded, as it explained, by inviting Lulas advisers to also comment) was a sign of transparency. Because nothing occurred afterward in terms of a denial by the PT, at least up to now, it can presumed that the event occurred.
