Our pneumonia
By Bernardo Ajzenberg
May 4, 2003
On April 16, Folha published a story titled Organizer says I dont want Asians at the show. It emphasized a statement by the president of Agrishow, the international show of agricultural technology that closed yesterday in Ribero Preto (So Paulo state). The entire quote said:
We dont want Asians coming here. I dont want Asians at the show. I dont want South Africans at the show. It would be better if they didnt come until all this goes away. By all this, he means Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the new topic in the international press since the fall of Baghdad on April 9.
The embassies of China and South Africa were perplexed. The events organizer said afterward that it had made a retraction and the matter stayed that way, at least in the media. Still, the problem that this type of statement shows continues to proliferate in the news media, most of which in Brazil, including Folha, call SARS the Asian pneumonia.
In an internal critique last Monday, inspired by an e-mail sent on Saturday by a reader in the northeastern state of Cear, I proposed getting rid of this name, using the argument that it suggests prejudice, causing ethnic discrimination.
In that e-mail, after recalling that at its inception (the 1980s) AIDS began to be called the gay cancer (I also remember gay scourge), the reader, who is a pediatrician, related the observation made in his office by a couple (educated professionals). They believed that it would be improbable that the illness (SARS) could occur in our state (Cear) because there is no Asian population in Fortaleza (the state capital) and, despite being a tourist destination, Chinese are not the principal customers in our airports.
The example is crystal clear, as was the one furnished in the case of the president of Agrishow.
Despite the relationship to cases that occurred in Asia, especially in China, which up to now has registered the absolute majority of victims, SARS is not a continental pathology, as the readers message reminds us.
He adds: There is no possibility that this virus is confined to Orientals anyone, white, black, yellow or dark, could be contaminated.
Newspapers in few countries call it Asian pneumonia. The majority adopted atypical pneumonia, in line with the World Health Organization (WHO), or simply SARS. Why does Brazil not do the same, starting with Folha?
Ethics and controversy
A rare coincidence arose in a few days in the newspaper in three episodes related to questions of journalistic ethics which are worth reflection.
Beside a story about the Miss Brazil pageant on Saturday, Folha on Monday published a chronicle by columnist Danuza Leo about the event.
In an internal critique, I questioned the procedure: I dont look at the topic from a personal viewpoint, but it seems unfit to me that a columnist who was a judge in the contest … writes in the newspaper a chronicle about the same event.
As an attenuating circumstance, I observed that in the story, the writer told in a transparent way that she was a judge. Consulted by the ombudsman, Danuza clarified that she was not paid for her participation, that she informed readers about her presence as a judge and that voting for the 10 most beautiful contestants did not prevent me from seeing what I would have seen had I been in the audience or watched it on TV: that the beauty pageant is a world unto itself, that concepts of beauty measures, etc. are different than what the media have imposed on us for years (slenderness, thin legs, etc.), that every hair has to be the same, etc.
The managing editor determined that: 1) this was not treated as a news story; 2) no topic of public interest was at risk; 3) the fact that the writer was a judge (which was revealed) and known personality offered an interesting viewpoint to readers; and 4) the newspaper offered additional information and added appeal to a story that is only entertaining.
The topic is controversial and complex. For my part, I think that, independent of attenuating circumstances, the columnists good faith and the possible editorial advantages, such a combination can always make the reader feel like a fly on the wall. And the mere possibility of doubt is not something positive, whether for the newspaper or the journalist. I prefer the rigid objectivity in Folhas stylebook, where the passage on ethics (page 41) relates how one of the highest ethical principles of the profession is not writing about topics in which (the journalist) has direct personal interests.
Its worth pointing out, on the other hand, that the sincerity of the contest was questioned in stories in other newspapers during the week (a day earlier, Dirio de So Paulo published classified ads written as code with the name of the winner, so afterward it could show the supposed fraud), something that Folha chose to ignore. But, that is a completely different topic.
Valor
On Tuesday, Valor Econmico a daily newspaper that specializes in financial news that is published by the companies that own Folha and the Rio daily O Globo reported a change in its presidency.
The news which circulated on a specialized Internet page the previous day also was reported by O Estado de So Paulo and Gazeta Mercantil. Folha and Globo did not publish anything I pointed out the mistake of this omission in my internal critique on Tuesday and ended up having it only the next day (in Wednesdays editions).
The managing editor said, At first, the newspaper considered it a topic of minor importance for its readers. Afterward, we thought what it would merit listing in a fixture.
We publish dozens of announcements every day of a type of lesser importance for readers that is heterogeneous. I believe that here, at least at first, the principle of transparency in truth has been frustrated, even more than the news about the departing director Flvio Pestana who is part of the editorial board at Folha (a fact, by the way, that was left out of the announcement).
Lula and Brizola
An illustrative story published Wednesday showed that President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, whose proposal to reform the pension system projects a contribution by retired public employees, backed a petition in 2002 that condemned an identical proposal by the government of then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Writing about the same topic, moreover, Globo added that the petition had been identified the day before by Leonel Brizola, the head of the left-leaning Democratic Workers Party (PDT), who campaigned against approval of the measure.
This information relevant from the standpoint of political infighting within Lulas governing alliance was not in Folhas story.
On Wednesday, in an analysis of the situation, an editorial in Folha used a formulation traditionally adopted when the newspaper refers to a scoop it had: As reported in Folha, Lula signed the petition … In this situation, however, that was not the case.
Asked to comment about these points, the managing editor said that the newspapers source was not the PDT leader and that we didnt know that Brizola had passed (the document) to other newspapers the same day.
As for the editorial, he argued that it said that Folha reported, not that Folha was the only one to report.
I believe its important to point out, however, that on Tuesday night the evening news on TV showed Brizola with the petition. That does not justify the fact that Folha did not even include this element in Wednesdays story. The news should always be in the front. It requires patience, in this case, if hours before it was presented as a valuable scoop and then stopped being one.
