Since the day Brazil won the soccer World Cup for the fifth time until yesterday, Folha has published 40 editions. Among them, no fewer than 35 (or 88%) were about the economy. Rather than showing a fixation by the newspaper about the topic, this fact expresses the seriousness of the international economic situation, fostered here even by electoral anxiety.
The topic gained even more presence last week when the final touches were put on the terms of a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
And what youve seen in coverage of this topic was that despite its systematic following of the financial community, and even though Folha didnt look as bad as the competition the newspaper erred in most of its attempts to bring readers up to date with what was going on between Brazil and the IMF.
The problem here goes beyond a mere error in forecasting. The amounts and size of the agreement have a direct relation to the dimensions of the crisis and the intensity of the light that you can see at the end of the tunnel. Using numbers, therefore, interferes some way with reality; it implies obvious responsibility.
The first newspaper to report the articulation of a new agreement with the fund was the financial daily Valor Econmico on July 5 (see box). From that point on, news organizations entered into a crazy race to see who would first be able to put the frosting on the cake.
In the July 27 edition, for example, Folha asserted that Brazils intention was to obtain a loan between US $5 billion and $10 billion for a duration of six to 12 months.
Last Wednesday, it reported that the IMF could offer $10 billion to $12 billion in new funds in a package in which the total, including other eventual operations, would total $25 billion.
Then, in a story the next day, the new funds alone were $30 billion. This didnt even include other items in the agreement that came out different from what was considered as probable in the news (maturity date, primary surplus, whether or not preexisting debts would be rolled over, and reduction in the amount of liquid international reserves, for example).
It must be pointed out that things werent always that way. In the 1998 and 2001 agreements, Folha did a better job.
On Nov. 12, 1988, for example, a story estimated the package in development at the time to be $42 billion (days before, it already said that it could reach $45 billion). The agreement, according to a story on Nov. 14, totaled $41.5 billion.
Last year, a story on Aug. 1 calculated a total of between $15 billion and $20 billion. The package, according to the Aug. 4 edition, was $15 billion.
Vinicius Torres Freire, editor of the financial section, admitted a lack of precision but said that coverage of the recent package was more difficult than the earlier ones.
There were fewer people and institutions (therefore, fewer possible sources) involved in the negotiations, and the agreement was discussed and finished in practically one week, against two months in 1998, for example, he explained.
Sources in the private sector had no more information than journalists did this time, he added. Furthermore, now we were dealing with a new negotiation, to be honored by a new administration that could turn out to be the opposition, which multiplies the uncertainty of what can be agreed upon (Brazilians elect a replacement for centrist President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in October; the top two candidates lean leftward).
Another difficulty, according to Torres Freire is the gag order in which officials at both the government and IMF towed the line. These considerations make sense. I add, however, that despite such barriers and the climate of uncertainty regarding the electoral race, the tension in financial markets and competitive pressures of newspapers seems to have increased the rush of journalists, which increases the risk of committing mistakes.
With a lack of totally reliable information, it is always better to economize paper and save time for readers, which in the end has nothing to do with this.
Whats new
The major new feature in the election news this year up to now has been the interviews conducted with the major presidential candidates on the Globo TV networks news programs.
It redeemed itself from an inglorious past, by bending, in the fight for audience, the need for adjustments to maintain credibility in a society in which demands tend to grow by the proportion in which citizens, for better or worse, advance. The motives that make broadcasters change focus and adopt, in this coverage, positioning that prioritizes impartiality, critical vision, and seeking the truth could be discussed non-stop for hours.
The fact is that, since the first interviews on the Globo TV news in the beginning of June through those last week, you have seen candidates with a perplexed face, sometimes hesitating, and questioned firmly, without being able to say that they have given explicit favoritism to any one of them.
There are even those who say that the interviewers have been too aggressive, inquisitorial, and ill mannered (an Internet site on Friday carried discussions along these lines).
While perceiving a certain artificiality, a kind of almost juvenile anxiety in the behavior of some on-camera interviewers who have shown a lack of ability to draw the candidates out as much as they should, I think that the result is positive.
Maybe this would be the way to dispassionately take apart on live TV the habits molded by image makers, which lead to evasiveness. This doesnt stop being one of the irritating, but indispensable, functions of journalism.
Carlos Henrique Schroeder, head of the Globo Journalism Center, told me that up to now the questions have been prepared weeks in advance through long meetings among 10 people (the top journalists are the questioners) and surveys that they believe support them (documents, facts, numbers).
It still shows that what will happen will happen, whatever the development of the electoral campaign or behavior of the results in surveys of voter intentions we will maintain the same attitude.
Pick your candidate and protect him from catastrophe.
