The big Brazilian newspapers have similar priorities, with a few differences due to editorial projects or geographic location, but in general their coverage is pretty much the same. One way of understanding the priorities is to follow how they use their space, the visibility they give and the resources that a newspaper spends on coverage.
These observations occurred to me in connection with coverage of the presidential election in Venezuela. The neighboring country and its president, Hugo Chvez, have been an obligatory topic for Brazilian newspapers for a long time. Chvez is generally treated very critically. All you need to remember is the start of Folha’s editorial on Saturday: “There is no doubt that Venezuela will do better once it frees itself from President Hugo Chvez (my highlight), but it is necessary that the strongman leave office from the ballot box, not through methods alien to democracy.”
Coverage of events in that country became more frequent once Luiz Incio Lula da Silva assumed the presidency in Brazil. There are occasional comparisons between the two administrations, which are oriented toward the left. The tension between Venezuela and the United States (Chvez and Bush) and the confrontation between Chvez and opposition parties are routinely interpreted as threats to democracy and translated into Brazilian reality.
For all these reasons, it was hoped that the legislative election last Sunday would merit special attention from newspapers. It was a good opportunity to publish exclusive stories and analysis with diverse viewpoints about what is happening in that country in the political, economic and social arenas, without the filter of international news agencies.
The election was held Sunday. Stories in Folha on the two previous days came from agencies. The first dispatch by a reporter sent to Caracas came out only on the day of voting. Folha had its own information for only three days. Then on Wednesday, the news was already coming from the agencies again.
No Brazilian newspaper currently has a good network of foreign correspondents, and the difficulties of sending journalists on foreign missions are common to all. The problem of Venezuelan election coverage was not just at Folha. “O Estado de So Paulo” published the first story from its reporter on Friday, Dec. 2. But on Wednesday it returned to the agencies. The Rio daily “O Globo”did not even send a reporter to Caracas.
The problem is not only related to international coverage. As we have already seen on other occasions, coverage outside of the Braslia-So Paulo-Rio axis is less thorough. When reporters are sent in for special coverage, they arrive late and stay only a short time.
The distribution of journalists sent by Folha for special coverage between Saturday, Dec. 3 and the day before yesterday will help to understand a little bit about the priorities I referred to at the start of this column: the newspaper had a reporter who was quickly sent to and from Caracas (Venezuelan election); three covering games in the Brazilian Soccer Championship (Goinia and Curitiba); two in Leipzig (Switzerland) to follow the lottery for the soccer World Cup; two in Montevideo, Uruguay, for the Mercosur summit of South American leaders; and one in Belm for the trial of two people accused of killing an American nun, Dorothy Stang.
In other words, five for soccer, three for international political and economic coverage, and one at the trial in the nun’s killing.
The case of the death of the church worker reveals another aspect of coverage: the lack of continuity. A survey done by Folha’s news archives shows that before the nun’s death the conflicts in the Anapu region were practically ignored. They were found in two small items in 2004. She died Feb. 12 and coverage was intense, with five reporters sent to the region at different times, through the end of the month. In March, the news stories became less common and a month after the killing, except for one or two occasional items, the news was sparse. Now it is back, with the trial.
INTERNATIONAL COVERAGE
The eyes of foreigners
Journalist Matas Molina, formerly editor at the financial daily “Gazeta Mercantil” and a correspondent in London, is now director of analysis of international information at Companhia da Notcia (News Company) and since Oct. 7 has written a series of reports in the supplement “Me &” in the economic daily “Valor Econmico” about the main newspapers in the world.
The first piece in the series, “Reading the world elite daily,” summarized common aspects that he found in newspapers such as “The New York Times,” “Financial Times,” “The Wall Street Journal,” “Le Monde,” “El Pas,” and others of the same level in Japan, Germany and Italy.
“What is most important is that they are read by the elite, who help form opinions and, for their part, are influenced by them. Some are clearly considered spokesmen for the bourgeois and others contribute to the intellectual debate. But all of them respect the intelligence of the reader and show a big interest in international topics, global business, cultural topics, and concern for public issues. Their opinions are well expressed. They have sober graphic presentation, linguistic sophistication and cosmopolitan appeal … They try to present a schedule of events, not a confused mosaic. But, despite their influence, the best newspapers maintain a healthy distance from the governments of the day and resist the temptation to feel that they are part of the power structure. The elite press always has a tense relationship with power, and political power maintains an ambivalent attitude toward them. The relationship goes from lack of confidence to respect for them and frequently becomes fear and scorn. But one thing the power structure does not do is ignore the influence of these newspapers.”
I wanted to know from Matas Molina how he sees the major Brazilian newspapers in relation to the world elite. His observation was fixed on one point, the network of correspondents.
“One detail, in the comparison of Brazilian newspapers with the great newspapers of the world, is the use of correspondents. In the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, the Brazilian press had its own correspondents in diverse capitals. This has changed. Brazil now looks at the world through the eyes of foreigners. This in part is inevitable, given the cost of maintaining its own network, but putting some high-level journalists in strategic points would help the press have its own vision on the big issues, not just a translated vision.”
Journalist Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva has a critical opinion similar about Folha. He just put out the book “1000 Days: 6,000 Days Later” (Publifolha) and in the preface has a retrospective of “Project Folha” the establishment of which he participated actively between 1984 and 1987.
“The engine of the group, Folha, has not become immune from torment. In the important 1990s many of the editorial victories were abandoned. For example, the network of foreign correspondents, who had been a characteristic of the newspaper since the second half of the 1970s, was at its height at the start of the 1990s. When I went to Washington, Folha had seven correspondents in the United States and numerous people in Europe, and still others in various parts of the world. Independent international coverage was one of the areas drastically affected by the cost cutting that reduced the staff and spending for many years. The best journalists in the group that we had at the start of “Project Folha” 20 years earlier left the team amid the imperious necessity to cut spending.”
Translation by John Wright
