Would you publish [photographs showing the police brutally beating a defiant young boy suspected of drug dealing]? Yes or no? Last Friday, Folha readers saw such pictures “blown up” on the newspaper’s front page and on the front of the local news section.
“Blow ups,” in Brazilian newspaper slang, means that the photos were cropped big. Did you discuss the photos with anybody at home or at work? Were you disgusted by anyone? The boy? The police? Folha?
Taken by photojournalist Moacyr Lopes Junior, the photos ran without captions. Police subdue the boy, who resisted an alleged anti-drug crackdown. They use violence and carry arms, but they also appear to be overcome. Despite the beating, the boy laughs, sneers. The photos are redundant. They show a side of reality which the great majority of people in large Brazilian cities have learned to live with. Misery, indifference to street children, and the violence they return to society are only a discomfort, increasingly tolerated and, when possible, ignored.
Two readers called me about this matter that day, both to express their objections to the photos and the headline carried above the photos: “Show of force.” Chemical engineer Magda Lucia Piraine, who lives in central Sao Paulo, said that she has been assaulted by these street hoodlums several times. She said that they are resonsible for her having panic attacks when the passes through the area. She doesn’t go there anymore.
The reader believes that publication of the photos is simplistic and demagogic, crucifying the police who “in the end, acted the way they did to control the situation. At least, they are trying to do something and shouldn’t be crucified. I support the police.” Housewife Edmar Fustinoni Pagani also called to complain about the “exaggeration” in the publication of the six photos, three on the front page and three on the front of the local news section.
She believes that Folha contibuted to further eroding the image of the police, which is already bad because of their low salaries. She said that society should unite to face the problem, not demoralize those who are trying to do something. “Those boys have already put a razor blade to my daughter’s face, do you understand?” she emphasized. “The honest citizen is completely unprotected,” she added.
Readers Silvia Cortez, Mauricio Goncalves and Ernande Pinho sent e-mail to say that “in five minutes of conversation in the office, we were all opposed to the reporting.” Nobody contacted me to say they favored publication of this sequence of photos. In conversations with the two readers who called, I argued in favor of publication of the photos.
By themselves, the photos already have journalistic significance. Publishing only one of them wouldn’t manage to show the details of the scene and wouldn’t have the effect of knocking down the acceptance of what happened. As “blow ups,” in sequence, the photos shake up, at least for a short while, the attraction.
We react, sometimes against the newspaper. One reason is because Brazilian misery insists on invading these pages, this “highbrow” cosmopolitan citadel which so often remains above these matters. Misery interferes with our lives through a newspaper because it is emblematic of our identity and distinctiveness.
Doesn’t it have something to do with the fact that many people would like to do to the boys what the police are doing?
Instead, the newspaper publishes this and exposes our repudiation to the trunculence and the impotence of police, the illegality and eternal ignorance by the state to our ambiguous position. Uncomfortable, for sure. Also irritating. Perhaps it’s not very elegant or in the correct dosage. But it makes us think.
