The Center for Studies about Safety and Citizenship (Cesec) at Cndido Mendes University in Rio began an unprecedented project to analyze the coverage that newspapers have done about crime, acts of violence and public safety policies.
The survey evaluated 2,514 stories (articles, editorials and opinion pieces) published over five months in 2004 in three newspapers in So Paulo (Folha, “Estado,” and “Agora”), three in Rio (“O Globo,” “Jornal do Brasil” and “O Dia”) and three in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state (“Estado de Minas,” “Dirio da Tarde” and “Hoje em Dia”).
The project has not ended yet. The Media and Violence study finished the first phase of classifying stories and now begins an analysis of the numbers collected. But there are some data available that should make newspapers think.
1 – Only 36.40f the texts analyzed made reference to more than one source of information.
2 – 32.5% had the police as their main source.
3 – Only 10.5ontained diversity of versions or opinions.
In other words, the partial study confirmed the extreme dependency that newspapers have on police sources. It is a problem because they are rarely reliable sources.
Irresponsibility
There are recent cases which show how the police manipulate the press and how the press ends up repeating, without showing any proof, hasty accusations by police authorities. I recall the case of student Luciana de Novaes, hit by a stray bullet, in May 2003, when she was eating at the campus of Estcio de S University in Rio. Police revealed, that day and on following days, various names of suspects until a student at the university was named as responsible for the gunshot.
Another case, in November 2003 and also in Rio, was the murder of Shell executive Zera Todd Staheli and his wife Michelle. The police, before any investigation, aired various theories, none of them proved, and then arrived at the couple’s daughter as a suspect.
This doesn’t occur only in Rio. Pressured by the press on big cases, the irresponsible behavior of the police is repeated throughout Brazil.
The exclusive dependence on police sources is an even more serious problem in cities where drug trafficking dominates territories. Since the press can’t enter these locations, crimes that occur there have only one version, that of the police. At times when the press gets access to other sources, the police version is not always confirmed.
New case
None of this is news. Newspapers know about this dependency and recognize publicly the problems it causes, but they continue to give unlimited credit to the police. We just saw another example. Environmentalist Dionsio Jlio Ribero was assassinated in Rio on Tuesday night. On Friday, the newspapers gave the names of various suspects named by police. One of them was accused because it was discovered that he was a killer who was a fugitive from authorities.
The fact that the suspect has a verified alibi that did not prevent his name and picture from coming out in the newspapers. The police had an obligation to seize him, being a fugitive, but there was no evidence to accuse him in the case of the environmentalist. Folha still published his name and the story of a Protestant pastor who, according to police, was the other suspect.
On that same Friday, the police announced in the afternoon the arrest of the assassin. He was not a fugitive or pastor. And now?
Celebrity journalism
There were not many, but some readers complained about the coverage and the space that Folha dedicated to the wedding of soccer star Ronaldo and model Daniela Cicarelli in Chantilly Castle, near Paris, on Feb. 14.
I am reproducing some passages from letters that summarize the complaints: “Coverage of the wedding of Ronaldo went way overboard, it looked like coverage in fan magazines. Sending a journalist to this type of event is ridiculous and irrelevant.” Another: “If this story had been published in an entertainment magazine it would be disputed. If it were in the arts and entertainment section, it would not be in keeping with Folha’s standards. In the sports section, it is an aberration.”
Did Folha really exaggerate in this coverage? I believe that no newspaper has a way to escape from this type of news. I also see no problem with sending a reporter to cover the wedding. It is better than being at the mercy of news agencies. A good reporter can do something unique. It would be a problem to spend money on this kind of trip if the newspaper were not sending reporters to remote Par state, for example. That is not the case.
The problem, in my opinion, was not in doing the coverage but in the way it was covered. Newspapers such as Folha, which want to be opinion makers, are subject to market pressure and get lost at times like this. They can’t give in to the curiosity of readers without seeming frivolous; they can’t be overly critical without seeming peevish. They ended up not satisfying either those who want gossip or those who want reflection.
I believe that a little bit of this occurred in this coverage: too much scandal and futility, such as in the story “Daniella evicts ex-rival from wedding,” and so many other stories that tried to understand the phenomenon, such as on the front page of the arts and entertainment section on Feb. 20, “Scenes from a wedding.”
How do you transform this insatiable curiosity about celebrities and their events in intelligent stories? This is the challenge that newspapers such as Folha must confront if they want to continue being opinion makers.
REFLECTION
“Without shedding any light”
Marcelo Coelho is a columnist at Folha, member of its editorial council and author of “I Like to Disagree” (tica Publishing).
“I believe it is very difficult, from a journalistic viewpoint, to ignore what happens with celebrities. Not only because the reader is interested, in theory, in the topic. I believe the more important argument is that the topic of celebrities is in fact decisive in our time.
“From President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva to Tony Blair, from Silvio Berlusconi to Bush, the language of political power impregnates itself completely in televised images. All of these leaders exercise a halfway decorative role and don’t distinguish themselves from heroes and villains in soap operas. Given the plastification of political leadership, it is as if the public missed common people, who curse and lose their tempers; sometimes these people are elevated to the status of celebrities, thanks to beauty or some type of talent.
“Contrasting with the false language of ‘celebrities’ of politics or ‘celebrities’ of scandals, weddings of millionaires and squandering seem to bring a component of human truth: they show pleasures and miseries that exist perhaps in the political and entrpreneurial life, but they hide a little.
“How should the press treat this? Naturally, without shedding any light. But what is the opposite of the light? Cynicism, demystifying, criticism? In my opinion, the celebrities themselves are in charge of this: they know, they declare, flaunt their own banality, their own cynicism. There is no idealization of what they do; the spectacle of squandering they offer does not arise like ‘nobility,’ ‘success,’ ‘excellence,’ but just like squandering.
“I believe that many times Folha has gotten its coverage right, when it deals with the commercial or sociological aspect of these events, without shedding light or playing the game of complacent cynicism. The social column, celebrity journalism and coverage of political farce in Braslia, in my opinion, converges more than it seems, if we know how to show it impartially, which is different from celebration but also different from pure debauchery.”
Translation by John Wright
