It was a week of laurels for the administration of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. All the economic and electoral indicators were favorable. Inflation is under control, industrial production is rising, and exports are at record levels. So Paulo Mayor Marta Suplicy and various other candidates of Lula’s left-leaning Workers Party (PT) are well positioned for upcoming municipal elections. As a reaction to the good economic news, opinions about the administration, which had been falling, have improved.
It was a week of celebrations, but the government did not have time to pull its head out of the trench.
The steady stream of words, which began a week earlier with complaints by the presidents of the Central Bank and Banco do Brasil, continued in the clash with the opposition in the congressional investigation into Banestado Bank and a strong reaction in the media to the two proposals expropriated by the presidential palace: the creation of a National Cinema and Audiovisual Agency and a Federal Journalism Council.
On Wednesday, the controversial new proposal entered the line of fire: the government wanted to prohibit public employees responsible for investigations from passing along information to the press.
I don’t intend to analyze here the policy of government information, while this group of initiatives and various statements by ministers indicates a tendency to restrict activities of the press and to “discipline it.”
I will limit myself to the proposal for a Federal Journalism Council, elaborated and approved by the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj), modified by the president’s office and sent to Congress on Thursday, August 5 by Labor Minister Ricardo Berzoini on behalf of the president.
Bombardment
It must be said that from the start the proposal was bombarded in the press, including in Folha. The news was predominantly against the projected law that creates the council.
Folha gave the most attention to the initiative and associated it immediately with an attempt by the government to control the press. The newspaper pointed out that the proposal was introduced in a context of “difficulties in the relationship between the Lula government and the press,” which is not totally wrong. But, considering it to be something at the government’s service, the newspaper omitted one piece of relevant information: the proposal had been generated by industry organizations.
A survey I carried out through Friday showed an apparent search for impartiality by the newspaper: I counted throughout the week in published stories 15 opinions favorable toward the council and 14 against it. But it is balanced only numerically because the unfavorable opinions got more attention during the week and were repeated numerous times. During the same period, six opinion pieces were published, with only one supporting the council, written by Ricardo Kotscho, press secretary to the president.
The newspaper on Sunday already published an editorial condemning the council (“The sinister hand”). Twelve letters from readers were published about the topic: five favoring the council and seven against it.
This lack of balance has not allowed the proposal to be debated more profoundly.
The original sin
Now, the project.
According to Fenaj, there was no other way to present the project without the intermediation of the president’s office because the creation of an autarchy is attributed to the executive branch. But the fact is that the government took over the project, become a sponsor and shook one of the sacred precepts of journalism, that of independence in relation to public authorities.
Seeking official support from the PT government and allowing it to modify the project as it was presented and defended, Fenaj committed a tactical error that could be the result of a strategic mistake. And it legitimized the chorus of scoldings that ministers and the president are accustomed to giving reporters.
Did Fenaj have other ways to present this project without the necessity of associating it with the government? Possibly. Nothing guarantees that it will pass without opposition. But the manner it chose turned the discussion into something partisan and contaminated it. The debate stopped being about advice and became stuck on the intentions of the PT government.
Public control
In any event, it deserves credit for starting an important discussion in society and among journalists. I am against the project because it is associated with the government; because it has as its main concern the punishment of journalists who are on the front lines of newsrooms; because, for the type of punishment that it intends to impart, society already has tools and utilizes them routinely. And because it ignores the contradictions that it establishes at the heart of the profession.
An example of these contradictions is in newspapers this week. On Wednesday, the government announced that it intends to issue a decree regulating a Professional Code of Ethics for Civil Servants in the executive branch. The stated objective is to impede employees from giving information to the press. Is a spokesman who works for the federal government subject to the code of public servants or that of the journalism council?
In other words, what will be the code of ethics for the National Journalism Council? The Fenaj one that already exists, or will a new one be created? By whom? And what code do the flacks at private companies follow?
They are all, journalists and flacks, in the same profession, but they have distinct roles and, if both sides work honestly, conflicts. How will they be judged?
The debate is open and is in the interest of readers because it concerns the right to information. This project is an attempt to think about a profession increasingly weakened in a communications environment that is getting more complicated and out of control.
It is an illusion that news organizations and journalists imagine the pressures on the press only come from governments. There is a growing movement in society for high-quality information with various focuses, ideas and opinions, for balance in journalistic coverage. And this demand is not being met.
INTERVIEW
“Censorship is the worst”
The front page of the weekly news magazine Isto this week concerns a discussion about how journalism is practiced. According to the magazine, the removal of the former president of the Chamber of Deputies, Ibsen Pinheiro, in 1994 resulted from a journalistic error. A story in the news magazine Veja in 1993 reported that the then-congressman had nearly US $1 million in his bank accounts, an amount inconsistent with his income, which raised suspicions of corruption. But the calculation was mistaken: He only had US $1,000. The person responsible for the mistake, Lus Costa Pinto, publicly recognized it now, a decade later.
Isto published an interview with Ibsen and asked: “You were the victim of a journalistic error. Should the work of the press be limited?”
I reproduce this passage with his response: “What made the biggest impression on me was that there was a persistent perception before publication that this information was incorrect. But I was a journalist nearly all my life, and I believe in freedom of the press. If the press commits mistakes in its conduct, only freedom of the press is able to correct it. Worse than accusation is censorship. Accusation has a cure when the truth appears. With a censured press, accusation is eternal. The vices that the press practices can be corrected with freedom of the press, but I have no doubt that the most serious vices are the result of censorship.”
Translation by John Wright
