Only 28 days remain until Brazils presidential election. Up to now, the results of the competition for the presidential palace have been unpredictable. In the end, the combination of these two factors tends to make any blunder by a candidate fatal.
So, applying this same rational to evaluate the performance of journalistic coverage in the campaign shows that what we saw last week in Folha is worrisome. For a newspaper that promises impartiality in the news, recent days only four weeks before the vote have shown more than a few unfortunate moments.
It was a week in which supporters of Jos Serra (a former member of President Fernando Henrique Cardosos Cabinet is the handpicked successor to his centrist governing coalition) had reason to cheer, while backers of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva of the left-leaning Workers Party (PT) and Ciro Gomes (once governor of the northeastern state of Cear and former finance minister, he is the presidential candidate for the Peoples Socialist Party) felt mistreated. Look to the side and see headlines from the elections section between Aug. 30 and last Friday, Sept. 6. Its easy to notice which candidate among them merited the best treatment.
The most significant edition in this drumbeat against Ciro and Lula came out on Thursday.
Some example taken from it are:
- Despite the statistical tie between Ciro and Serra, only Lula and Serra had their pictures on the front page of the section, with a subtly ironic headline (Lula tightens links with military). The theory (false, at least until the next polls) is that the polarization between Lula and Serra has already consolidated, with Ciro out of the game, serving to benefit the governing alliance.
- The voter tracking telephone surveys showed a four-point increase for Lula in voter intentions, while Ciro lost two points and Serra gained one. Even though Lula is the only one that had real movement above the three-point margin of error, the headline on the story said: Survey now shows Serra with 21%, and Serra with 20%.
- On this day, Serra committed a gaffe in the northeastern city of Recife, speaking in an address about his own reelection (Our goal is to have 1000f the 6-year-old children by the end of our first term …). Perhaps Im overly critical, but in the climate in which Folha operated this week it would not be absurd to imagine that this kind of misstep, had it had been committed by Ciro or Lula, would have landed on the front page of the election section and been mentioned in the main news section. In this case, the news received two columns at the bottom of page 3 in the elections section.
- On the next page, a story about an event with business executives carried the headline Ciro receives tickets and bumper stickers at dinner. In a subtly deprecating tone, moreover, the story said that donations in cash and checks were also made at the meeting.
- Even the term graphite became stylish, when Ciro fell behind Serra in this horse race.
Another example occurred on Friday, when the headline Metal workers protest Lula visit was used to report on the candidates visit to airplane manufacturer Embraer.
The protest was organized by a union belonging to the Workers Central labor federation and has strong ties to the Unified Socialist Workers Party. The candidate never even saw the 15 people gathered with one sign. Did it deserve a mention? Yes, but it did not become the main event of the visit.
In a report Wednesday about government auditors looking into records kept by the Labor Strength union (a case that involves Ciros running mate, Paulinho), the newspaper made no mention of responsibility, by all indications on a big scale, of the Labor Ministry in the matter.
The case of Zeca
The first episode of the pro-Serra cycle about alleged links between the PT government of Mato Grosso Gov. Jos Miranda dos Santos (known by the nickname Zeca), members of his staff and a gang of car thieves, was published Sunday, the same day that Datafolha showed a second-place tie between Serra and Ciro.
All the profound questions that this story brings up would not fit in this space, especially the way probes by prosecutors could be combined with journalistic investigation.
I highlight here only two aspects of the way it was edited, which corroborates the diagnosis of the week. The headline (Tie between PTs Zeca and gang is investigated) for example, forced the bar.
Reproducing data from a private report by prosecutors in Mato Grosso do Sul, the story reported explicitly that there was no formal investigation under way (the original probe ended in February) and that this link was not proved.
Another example was the extensive and detailed letter from the governor published on Tuesday after a small other side on Sunday that was only pro forma, a light and adjective-filled denial that was obtained in a hurry. The main point is that the government learned the facts only Thursday afternoon for an edition that closed Saturday.
What needs to be asked is why the newspaper, in such a serious matter, with so many data and names involved, did not hold the story a little longer so it could offer readers something more substantial and at least give an opportunity for the accused to tell their side.
Folha has a reserve of credibility accumulated through hard work over many years. All that the newspaper and its readers require is that this trust not be abused, especially in a situation as undefined as the present one, leading up to the final outcome of the elections.
The examples mentioned here show that the risks of this happening do exist. Closing eyes to deny them would be the worst course of action.
Editorial accident
Two emergency landings and the crash of an airplane were highlights on Aug. 30. The airplane that crashed, causing the death of 23 people near Rio Branco, in the remote northwestern state of Acre, belonged to the Rico Airline Company. The other two, which belonged to TAM, landed in Birigui and Campinas, both in So Paulo state.
As you can see in the reproduction to the side, the main headline of the story published on Saturday, Aug. 31 in the daily news section referred to the deaths but did not mention the name of the airline involved in the tragedy in Acre.
The picture published below it, however, is one of two Fokker-100 jets belonging to TAM (the one that landed in Birigui). The eyes of readers make an immediate association between the deaths in the headline and the logo of the So Paulo-based company in the photograph.
For a company like TAM that has experienced too much bad luck in terms of accidents in recent years, this visual confusion and editorial accident do nothing more than aggravate the problem beyond what is necessary. It could and should have been avoided.
