One of the bad things that journalism customarily affects is the unilateral treatment of news, in its most striking component, by forcing the bar one way or the other in the headlines on stories. Last week, it was possible to gather a batch of examples of this practice from Folha which were close to distortion. In chronological order they were:
PT in So Paulo has contracted for 566 million reals (US $226 million) without competitive bids was the headline on a story from last Sunday which said that the municipal government in So Paulo has already made contracts for services and public works by at least this amount without competitive bids.
The problem is not in this story, but in the headline. As much as So Paulo is a showcase for the PT (left-leaning Workers Party) being the party responsible in large part for what occurred here, an aspect about which I commented here last week is not the subject because the party cant be the contractor. By confusing the party and the municipal administration, the headline takes on an anti-Lula tone (referring to the partys presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva).
The headline of another story on the front page last Tuesday took a similar slant: Mortality rises in So Paulo districts.
Strictly speaking, there was no mistake, but look at this detail in the story: The number of babies up to a year old who die, among every thousand live births, increased in 38 of 96 administrative districts in the city of So Paulo between 2000 and last year.
So, the awful fact deals with a minority of districts. Thats fine. By using among, the headline saves itself and cannot be called wrong. But it seems evident that its generic formulation encourages, at first reading in this case, a negative impression about the administration in the state capital.
GDP
Heres a headline from Wednesday: GDP declines for second consecutive quarter. Here the newspaper throws fuel on the fire about how it seems to always be willing to emphasize the negative side of things.
I ask the readers permission to allow me to extend this matter with the goal of trying to make the problem clear. According to the IBGE research institute, the sum of all goods and services produced in the country (GDP) suffered a 0.73 0ecline in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2001. As in the final quarter of last year, this statistic was also negative (0.69%), in the headline.
There was a detail, however: If you compare it to the final three months of 2001, this first quarter actually showed growth (1.34%). Furthermore, they were expecting a bigger decline because at the start of 2001 the economy was, as they say, heated up.
These numbers, in the view of some economists, even allow for a certain amount of optimism. They explain, for example, a headline in the business section (Economic surprises and GDP worsens a little) on a story about two consecutive declines in the indicator that was not in the lead.
The inclination toward cataclysm in the headline on the front page of Folha is clearer if you consider that, by the criteria of analysts in the financial markets, a decline in the GDP for two consecutive quarters characterizes a recession (the explanation given by this newspaper).
To complicate things further: In another story on the inside, none of the experts consulted, despite being market analysts, accepted any notion that we are in a recession.
So, if the newspaper knew this, why did it choose a headline that, while not a lie, could have made readers think that we are in a recession? Even if that were the correct option, why then didnt we invert our priorities in the financial section in the name of coherence?
Further on this topic, its worth pointing out the headline of O Estado de So Paulo, which also made a decision, but for the exact opposite extreme with the information: IBGE says that GDP shows signs of recovery.
Unemployment
The same negative impulse was revealed, also on Wednesday, in the headline on the story Brazil is No. 2 in the world for unemployment.
The story said that only India has more unemployed people, in absolute numbers, than Brazil. But, different from the impression given by the headline, our country is 23rd in unemployment levels, which clearly is horrible, but is far different from being second.
Apart from the merit which this type of statistic does or doesnt deserve (columnist Clvis Rossi, for example, questioned it on Thursday), the headline given to the topic in the Rio daily O Globo was much more precise: Brazil: Second in unemployed in world.
Another headline from May 22 occurred to me outside of chronological order: Banco do Brasil employees will have to increase contributions to cover pension fund embezzlement. In summary: Given the size of the hole in the pension fund for Banco do Brazil employees, the story said that the possibility of participants paying more than they pay today to guarantee their retirement is being debated.
The truth, however, is that this idea was defended in the story by a member of the government while a representative of the pension fund, a few paragraphs earlier, questioned the alternative.
Nobody with a healthy conscience could say that everything is going well in public administration, infant mortality, economic life or unemployment. Still, the portion of those who think that everything could be at least not as bad as it seems to be growing.
In the same way, to give some examples mentioned here, readers are able to politically interpret the news relative to public administration.
Reality speaks for itself. If you can manage to portray it, naked and crude, the newspaper meets its obligation. Thats enough. There is no reason to give the potential about data, or, in simpler words, force the bar.
Conditions at the University of So Paulo
Judging by some signs coming out sparsely in the newspapers, the University of So Paulo, or at least an important part of it, seems to be experiencing significant deterioration. About a month ago, students in the School of Philosophy, Letters and Social Sciences began a strike, following mobilizations of workers and faculty. The former wants higher salaries, while the latter is pushing for more professors and against overcrowded classrooms.
According to a report by Folha on May 4, the school well known since the 1930s with celebrities among the most important Brazilian intellectuals could be experiencing the greatest crisis in its history.
One of the structural movements behind this serious situation has to do with the devaluation of the social sciences, together with compromising USP in the market.
Against an average standard of one professor for every 14 students at the university, the school has one professor for every 35.2 students.
Alternating between love and hate, at least since the end of the 1970s, the relationship between Folha and USP was always strictly socially beneficial. For this reason, its strange that the newspaper has limited coverage of the current situation to the little story May 4 and, since then, briefs about negotiations between the university administration or public acts by the students.
It has practically abandoned the subject, relegating it to merely following facts and superficial, much less than the seriousness that the crisis would appear to demand. The omission also doesnt stop being a journalistic posture.
What is happening at USP? At what point can you speak about deterioration and/or adoption of new roads? How did we get to this point? What is the profile of the university today?
Folhas readers have the right to know.
