How to decrease bad outcomes
CARLOS EDUARDO LINS DA SILVA
ombudsman@uol.com.br
The legislature produces more than crime and gossip, the two only creations that seem to mobilize reporting
On Thursday, the newspaper reported that the Senate had approved, on the final reading, a law to change the rules regarding adoption of children. The most recent mention in Folha about the topic was Aug. 21, 2008. It was as if it announced 10 months ago that singer Roberto Carlos would do a show at Maracan stadium and only revisited the topic on Monday to describe the performance.
Or as if it had said on Thursday that Cruzeiro would lose the final game to Libertadores without mentioning the championship 300 days earlier.
Few would disagree that the National Adoption Law is a relevant topic. It is like the law regarding gratuities, electoral reform, regulation of motorcycle taxis, and changes in divorce, to name a few laws about which Congress has made vital decisions recently and were shown to readers only as done deals.
Legislative work (at its three levels) is covered poorly by Folha. And not for lack of staff or paper. A large number of trees were felled to produce a mountain of pages used for the thousand and one scandals in the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate this year alone.
It is clear that denouncing malfeasance with public money is one of the main functions of journalism.
But the legislature produces more than crime and gossip, which are its only two creations that seem to mobilize coverage by this newspaper.
Even in these areas, its performance is weak. Corruption in general only appears when some politician interested in hurting adversaries spoon-feeds information to a reporter. Over the years, the Senate has had more than a hundred directors, whose names and functions were in public directories. But only now are we dealing with them, for example.
And coverage demands focusing on people, not institutions.
It is easier to blame individuals than to explain processes. But such simplification is pernicious for the citizenry and for society.
The newspaper needs to produce and publish more material of the type that generated a book recommended in this column and less of what has been its standard political journalism: stories that are predictable, redundant, summarized, superficial, boring, moralistic and frequently at the conscious or unconscious service of individual politicians or groups.
In an interview which goes on the air tomorrow and is indicated below, journalist Gay Talese said that an immediate recommendation to improve the quality of the “New York Times” would be to move most of the journalists assigned to cover Washington out of the U.S. capital.
Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to go that far.
If those who are in Braslia were dedicated to informing readers about the progress of important legislation and helping it engage in public debate, the newspaper would be more effective. Maybe then, it would stop covering up for suspicious members of Congress.
Slums are not just police blotter
There are police matters that are episodic: they occur and become news for whatever reason, and then they end. And there are those which result from structural situations (social, urban, economic) and will repeat themselves with seriousness and increasing reach while they last.
A tabloid-style newspaper can concentrate its natural efforts on these things. A newspaper of record should give less priority to these kinds of events.
This week, Folha was full of episodic police cases (girl falls from building, boxer’s wife arrested, man disappears in heavy winds, stolen bones and stolen Mercedes is abandoned).
On Monday and Wednesday, it dealt with “structural” cases involving slums in So Paulo. But it was almost as if they weren’t local events. That is not that way things should be.
Slums in Brazil’s big cities need to be examined in depth to change and improve. They can’t be treated by the newspaper as just “police blotter” any more.
Journalism has social and political obligations which it can’t give up, if for no other reason, for its own self interest. Its survival depends on meeting these responsibilities.
To read
“Politics in Brazil,” by Fernando Rodrigues, Publifolha Publishing, 2006 (starting at 33.92 reals, or U.S. $17.75)
To see
Interview with journalist Gay Talese on the “Live Roundtable” interview program (to be broadcast nationwide tomorrow at 10:10 p.m. on the Culture TV network)
What Folha did right…
Borges father
A great piece by writer Alan Pauls shines a light on the father of the late novelist Jorge Luis Borges, who was obscure up to now, in the arts and entertainment section on Saturday.
Honduras
Coverage of the coup has exclusive information and good analysis on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday
… and where it did badly
Rio Grande do Sul
A few months ago the newspaper dealt badly with the serious political crisis in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul; when it gave the topic more space, on Friday, it highlighted only the confrontation between the governor and protesters
Employment
Again on Friday, the edition preferred to emphasize only negative aspects – less important and against the trend – of data about employment generation in the country
Gotcha
A story’s value was ethically doubtful on Tuesday in getting statements by a psychologist that could be obtained in a less debatable way
Who is letters to the editor?
Letters
from readers 61
from people in the news 13
Centimeters
from readers 402
from people in the news 150
*from July 11 to 17, 2009
Topics most commented during the week
1. Jos Sarney (former president and current Senate leader)
2. Honduras coup
3. Enem (an achievement exam in secondary school)
Worth remembering
Cases that need to be looked at again
In the first seven months of 2008, hundreds of children died in the maternity ward at Santa Casa Hospital in Belm. What has happened in this matter, about which the newspaper has had nothing for at least 10 months?
-Translation by John Wright
