In reserved conversations, many influential people say that the country is melting, that Argentina and Uruguay are more than just geographic neighbors. The United States is applying pressure to control a new agreement with the IMF. In the air there is an increasingly strong smell of economic and social deterioration.
In this dramatic situation, the importance of critical journalistic coverage of the October presidential elections has seldom been so clear.
Nelson Biondi, director of marketing in the campaign of President Fernando Henrique Cardosos handpicked successor, Jos Serra (of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party), called attention to this, although in an indirect and contrary way.
According to a story in Folha on Wednesday (see below), the publicist, apprehensive about the candidates poor performance in the public opinion polls, asserted: You are criticizing the campaign before it has begun. He believes, according to the story, that the campaign does not have control of the message and that the image that appears of the candidates is what the media transmit.
Starting in August (when the free election ads start running on TV), we will take control again, Biondi said.
While his format and the preponderance of marketing vision still need to be questioned, the free election ads are a right, both to parties and citizens.
Nevertheless, Biondis argument exposes an undeclared dispute between him and the press. And, fundamentally, he is right. Even here, each wave of showing a candidate in the media corresponds to a rise in the polls, and each increase follows stories which, more or less, are to the contrary.
A better example was Maranho Gov. Roseana Sarney and her frustrated candidacy (she has dropped out). But the former candidate had (and still has) at least a dossier (of negative information) to carry on her shoulders.
If control of the message about which Biondi speaks about didnt remain, even here, totally in the hands of advertising people, it was because the press created some counterweight.
Does it deserve an A for this? Not necessarily, since a good part of those dossiers were really the result of updating old accusations. The press heated up the information, which was sufficiently circumscribed in investigation and reporting at the start. Almost nothing was really new.
Furthermore, different from what occurred in 1989, 1994 and 1998, there is a small exception this time with more fluctuation in the impartiality and too many instances of suppression of pluralism (some pointed out in this column).
There was friction between the candidates and the press. I ask, however, if it would be ideal if the press was even bigger and more numerous.
Up to now, there has been nothing about legislative elections in a country where Congress has a basic role in the application of any government program. Nor have we seen anything about campaign financing. While the jets are flying full speed, publicists and advisers are earning more than ever, and the streets are already full of campaign signs and banners.
There is nothing about an evaluation of the last eight years of the current administration. Starting Aug. 20, when the free election ads begin broadcasting, the challenge will be even bigger and the provocation by Biondi will gain strength.
Vigilance will have to be fortified in light of the daily bombardment of publicity. The counterweight should be simultaneous, even beforehand, rather than afterward or reactive.
The obligation becomes even bigger to unravel the obscure packages sold in the ads, to stimulate the debate about proposals (the weak point of coverage) beyond the rhetoric, and to keep the agendas of candidates from preventing readers from getting information in very minute detail.
The debate tonight on the Bandeirantes TV network, for example, is a test, like the open forums with candidates announced by Folha and the new round of interviews on the Globo TV networks nightly news.
Unexpected occurrences are also tests, only apparently inoffensive, such as the chats with So Paulo Mayor Marta Suplicy and Rosinha Matheus (the wife of Rio de Janeiro Gov. Anthony Garotinho, the presidential candidate for the Brazilian Socialist Party) after their interviews on TV Globo on Thursday. Suplicy used the occasion to criticize the exploitation of women by their politician husbands (Suplicys ex-husband is a senator). Folha did a bad job with this, in which declarations by the rising star in the left-leaning Workers Party were confusing.
Biondi spoke for himself, alluding to the fact that Serra will have much more time on TV than any other candidate (candidates are allotted the time of parties in an alliance if that party is not fielding its own candidate). But his indirect challenge to the media is, in truth, the same that society makes.
Mainly, when the country is sinking and bills for advertising are far from this explosive reality, the time is decisive in the struggle for power.
Omt…what?
On Thursday, I participated in a seminar at Paraba Federal University about Media, Government, Citizenship and Learning. On my panel (Criticism of Contemporary Brazilian Media), there were three speakers.
First of all, I summarized the Brazilian press, emphasizing the importance of discussing tools of social responsibility in the media. I gave examples of other countries, and I spoke about the relationship between the right to information and democracy.
The professor who followed me at the microphone traced a critical panorama related to teaching communications, defended the need for changes in the curriculum, and emphasized the importance of surveys.
The third panelist, also a professor, proposed a revision of criticism, made a critique of totalitarian criticism by the media, citing diverse well-known authors (names such as Durkheim, Adorno and Habermas, among others) and schools of sociology.
There were also written questions from the audience of about 250 people, which included students and professors.
Reading one of them, I blinked my eyes several times. In fancy handwriting, probably feminine, it said: What is the omt….sdulman? Pardon my ignorance, but we are only in the first year of journalism.
Well, I was speaking about systems of responsibility in the media, among other things, to the audience which, at least in part, had no idea up to that point what my function is. And these were journalism students in a university.
Fortunately, I had the time to respond to a legitimate question. From that point, I imagine, that facilitated understanding of what I had said earlier.
Inside my head there were also a lot of doubts about the understanding that a large part of the public must have about the interesting, while complex, presentations made by my colleagues at the table. I hope I was mistaken.
In any event, the episode called attention to the possibility of a permanent trench between those who write (or speak) and those who read (or listen), a trench much bigger than the broadcaster or publisher can imagine. That leads directly to thinking about the relationship between journalist and reader.
Along the same lines, pertinent questions by a reader about the following caption on a photograph published in the sports section of the national edition on that same Thursday are illustrative: Goalie Mare Cech of Zilina sees his teammate Marian Klago kick into his goal and tie the game 1 to 1 with Basel. The next game in the preliminary phase of the Championship Cup will be Wednesday.
The reader asked: Zilina? Basel? Where do these famous teams come from? The next game will be Wednesday. OK, where? Did the game take place in Zilina or Basel? Or are both from the same city? In other words, on what continent? My final question: Is the section only for experts?
Every journalist needs to spend at least two intensive days a year among a group of readers or journalism students. It would be a learning experience, and then some.
