Deformation of Letters to the Editor
By Bernardo Ajzenberg
May 25, 2003
Letters to the Editor, published on page A3, should be, by definition, a democratic space for readers to express their opinions and complaints. Its true that authorities and celebrities in general are also readers of the newspaper and that in this sense the presence of their letters in that area is noticeable. However, there is also a serious and worrisome deformation.
Most of the space in the section is occupied notoriously by letters from people who use the space to try to respond to stories from the newspaper in which they or their institutions were involved.
This month through Friday, 510f the space occupied by letters is from authorities, with their necessary responses from journalists. In the period from May 10 to 23, it rose to 58%.
Not by coincidence, the number of complaints grew from ordinary readers, who rightfully see a perversion of the section.
In a jocular tone, some messages to the ombudsman suggest changing the name to Page for Responses, Page for Corrections, Page for Ratification, Page for Complaints …
Its not a new problem. I already broached this topic on March 10, 2002, discussing, for example, the idea that also is not new, to create a space specifically for responses from authorities an idea that the executives at the newspaper believe to be discriminatory because it would, in principle, create two classes of readers.
The real problem at the heart of things is another: the newspapers difficulty to apply with regularity its own rule to always hear the other side and to make this principle an organic part of stories it publishes.
If this in fact happened as it should, its easy to suppose that the need for celebrities to respond to offer the other side would fall significantly and the newspaper would not feel obligated to reduce the chances for ordinary readers to express themselves democratically.
The current situation, like it or not, is that two categories exist in the Letters to the Editor: more readers and lesser readers.
Check-up at The Times
The wake of the explosive case of Jayson Blair, the former reporter at The New York Times who committed numerous cases of fraud in plagiarized stories, inventions and lies discussed here last week the most influential among U.S. newspapers announced on Wednesday, in a tough internal memorandum, the creation of a commission with more than 20 journalists, including four people from outside the Times, to review the main procedures used by the newsroom.
Among the people chosen is the former president of The Associated Press, the former op-ed editor at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a former ombudsman at The Washington Post.
According to the story, the idea to form this team of people should serve to rigorously verify the procedures to indicate whether or not the newspaper is too condescending to itself.
The group will track recruiting operations, hiring, promotion, the editorial process (including identification and prevention of errors), ethical questions, the use of unidentified sources (described as off the record), and will give the newspapers editors a report about whether or not they should establish the position of ombudsman.
Bombarded from all sides, including by its competitors, the Times, as you can see, is being blamed for the blows it suffered in the Blair case.
This way, one of the biggest and most important newspapers in the world shows how credibility, along with ethics and transparency, is integral to the nucleus of any news organization that tries to perform good journalism.
Its a question of survival.
Journalists and ads
The image of impartiality and independence at a newspaper and by its journalists involves continuous vigilance. Because it has traces of subjectivity, it creates, besides general ethical principles, objective rules of conduct that translate into practice the effort to maintain them.
Such rules are a type of agreement among the public, newspaper, journalist, and reader for the credibility and the right to information, independent of their opinions about various topics.
A full-page ad launched a real-estate campaign on Wednesday with a story by columnist Erika Palomino (see to side) that breaks a rule at the newspaper and raises an important question about the topic.
The rule, in the ethics entry in Folhas stylebook, says:
Journalists at Folha should not participate in commercial advertisements. The opportunity to participate in announcements for public interest campaigns, with prior authorization of the newsroom management, however, remains optional.
While prohibiting journalists from using their image for the sale or advertisement of products, this precept needs to be explained without a shadow of a doubt. The independence of journalists toward the interests of third parties could, in theory, be thrust onto the newspapers pages.
Palomino told the ombudsman that at the start she wrote the story as a free-lancer only for a brochure about the launch of the campaign and that, contacted later about its inclusion in the ad, she did not know that it violated her own ethical rules or those of the newspaper.
This was not testimony or a recommendation to buy, the columnist asserted. I only disclosed the characteristics of the neighborhood and the venture. If it were different, she said that she would have asked her editors about it.
She didnt believe that the episode stained either her reputation or that of the newspaper.
The newspapers management asserted that it was not consulted in advance about the matter and considers that she broke a clear rule in the stylebook, adding that the columnist was reprimanded by the newspaper.
Involvement with an advertisement, in effect, gives rise to speculation and opens the door for compromising confidence in the journalist by readers. In this case, the journalists opinion about the matter has little objective effect on the attitude.
Prohibition of such participation is a shield in defense of its image, and indirectly, the credibility of the newspaper itself.
