The Sader episode is another chapter in the confrontation that marks the increasingly tense relationship between the press and the (governing) Workers Party (PT)
Folha reported Nov. 2 that sociologist and political scientist Emir Sader was convicted for the crime of defamation and sentenced to one year in jail, but allowed to perform community service for his first crime and loss of his job as a professor at Rio de Janeiro State University.
He was sued by Sen. Jorge Bornhausen, president of the conservative Liberal Front Party, for an opinion piece published in 2005 over the Internet by the “Carta Maior” news agency in which he accused the politician of racism. Bornhausen had said, referring to the PT, that “people will be free from this race for at least 30 years.”
Sader wrote that the senator “is one of the most repulsive and bourgeois people in Brazil” and “now reveals all his racism and his hate for the Brazilian people with this phrase, which came from the bottom of his heart – filled with the profits of bankers and resentments.” In his piece, Sader asserted that the senator should be sued for discrimination and racism.
The day after news of his conviction was published, Folha chose two letters for Letters to the Editor, one lamenting the sentence as “repugnant and outrageous” and the other applauding the judge responsible for the sentence – “Let that serve as a lesson!”
On Monday, Nov. 6, the editor of national news (the department responsible for political news), Fernando de Barros e Silva, published an opinion piece on the op-ed page that was quite provocative, as is his style, considering the sentence to be absurd – “making Kafka envious and it must be reviewed” – but defended the right of Sen. Bornhausen to sue Sader. He recalled that Chico de Oliveira was sued by Delbio Soares when he broke with the PT and pointed out diversions (of public resources) by the party – “the gangster way of life by the PT members in power,” in Barros e Silva’s translation.
The undersigned
The pretext of the opinion piece was the circulation of a signed petition in favor of Sader and against the sentence. The motive could be explained by the passage in the piece: “The reelection of Lula (President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva) uncovered the vengeful anger by low-life PT members and revivified the authoritarian temptation that surrounds certain people in the presidential palace, the government and media.”
There was a reaction by readers of the opinion piece, not for this summary I showed, but for the beginning, where it disqualifies the sociologist: “As an intellectual, Emir Sader is a big nothing of a leftist.”
The next Monday, Barros e Silva went on the attack again with a column “Deciphering the enigma,” in which he considered a pro-Sader protest “opportunistic and hypocritical” and said that Sader himself was a witness in a lawsuit against Csar Benjamin, candidate for vice president along with Helosa Helena of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) in the recent election, for calumny and defamation. According to the journalist, Benjamin was sued for having said that a publisher, with ties to Sader, had overbilled for the publication of the book “The Lula Administration: Deciphering the Enigma.”
New letters to the editor: On Nov. 10, columnist Barbara Gancia wrote another column, also critical of Sader, “Enough of this trash!”
On Nov. 16, the newspaper published an item by Rogrio Cezar de Cerqueira Leite, of Folha’s editorial board, in which he used irony to analyze the criticism of Sader’s sentence: “And they still say Brazil’s justice system is not efficient. During the military government, they needed an Institutional Act to expel professors from the University of So Paulo.”
I received 18 letters from readers. As is customary in correspondence to the ombudsman, only one praised the column by Fernando de Barros e Silva. Letters to the Editor published seven letters, five which favored the sociologist and two against. In the electronic edition, another 10 were published, with six favorable, three against and one neutral about the controversy.
Right of response
How I see the question:
1 – As Barros e Silva makes it clear in his first column, the episode is another chapter in the confrontation that has marked the increasingly tense relationship between the press and members of the PT. Things have gotten stirred up on both sides and there are no signs of a truce.
2 – I don’t agree with the terms Barros e Silva used to criticize Sader. But it is his right to have this opinion, the same as it is Sader’s right to have the opinion he made about Bornhausen. If one of two people believes he was injured, defamed or suffered calumny, there is legitimate recourse in the justice system. The journalist who jealously protects the right to an opinion should be a champion for the defense of anyone who goes to the legal system feeling offended. The resource does not violate the freedom of expression – the legitimate one.
3 – I see a serious problem in Barros e Silva’s columns. In both, he makes reference, to support his arguments, to facts that have not been reported by the newspaper. The first was a protest in favor of Sader. What protest? The newspaper did not report a mobilization against the court’s sentence. The reader who saw this in the columns does not know the terms of the protest and had, therefore, only the opinion of the editor that this was “opportunistic and hypocritical.” In the second one, he cited a case which was never reported by the newspaper which involved Csar Benjamin. The subject was handled, and even then in an inconclusive way, only four days after the column. If the editor considered these facts to be relevant enough to use them, why did he not make sure they got coverage in the newspaper? I see a problem here in the so-called right to information.
4 – There is a more complex question, that of the right to respond. Through Friday, the newspaper did not publish a defense of the sociologist to the attacks that he suffered from the two columnists at the newspaper. The opinion piece by Rogrio Cerqueira Leite is favorable to Sader, but it deals exclusively with the topic of the sociologist’s sentence, not response to the criticism by Barros e Silva and Barbara Gancia.
Sader, who complained about the treatment he received, sought me during the week. I asked him why he did not seek his right to defense. He told me that he did not feel confidence in doing it “by the disqualifying way in the columns and the fact of being written to by people at the newspaper, including the political editor.” In his opinion, these factors did not give him “guarantee of equal treatment in the newspaper.”
He said that this was a mistake. He should have sought, from the start, the right to response guaranteed in Folha’s stylebook as well as that called for in the Constitution. I don’t believe that the newspaper would refuse to publish an opinion piece by the sociologist or someone who came to his defense. The newspaper has rules for controversies, and Sader would always get space in the newspaper.
Fashion models
Regarding the death of Ana Carolina Reston Marcan, 21, from anorexia, I received the following message from reader Amlia Artes of So Paulo, who began a discussion about the role of the press:
All the media have been talking about the model’s death from anorexia. Taking away from the tragic loss of someone so young, I see a great deal of hypocrisy in the coverage. Up to what point does the press not help in the production of these people? I will explain: often I have received, along with my newspaper, a fashion insert. In the latest one that I received, a few months ago, the models were so thin that they seemed to be in the waiting room at a clinic to be treated for anorexia. You value these “fashion models,” “sell” these products and afterwards say you are shocked! Why not boycott this type of exploitation of human thinness?
Translation by John Wright
