The Rev. Luciano Mendes de Almeida, the archbishop of Mariana, Minas Gerais state, and a columnist for Folha, on Wednesday criticized coverage by the press of Brazil’s political crisis. He did not complain about the lack of balance or about irresponsibility, the most frequent accusations, but he did consider it an exaggeration: “Corruption must be fought. But newspapers can’t occupy the biggest part of their space with this alone. There are many things in the country that must also be discussed, such as health, agrarian reform and the situation of retired people.”
Here are three observations:
1 – Folha’s numbers confirmed Rev. Luciano’s impression. The crisis dominates the news. But I believe that it could not be any other way, considering the gravity of the situation.
The newspaper has practically doubled the amount space in the national news section it devoted to political coverage involving accusations of corruption. To get an idea, the newspaper gave the topic three and a half pages (3.64 pages, to be exact) in political and national news in January. In February, it published almost five (4.84). Starting in May, this was increased and reached the equivalent of seven pages per day (6.74) in July.
Another indicator came from the news archives: in the first half of this year, the most contemplated topic in the newspaper was the administration of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva (on average 742 stories per month), followed closely by soccer (725 per month). By July, with the growing crisis, 1,397 stories involved the Lula administration, including the “allowance” scandal (in which politicians were paid for their support); soccer remained a more distant second, with 740.
The ranking of personalities preferred by the newspaper also changed a great deal in July. Throughout the first half of the year, the list of 10 names most cited included the main personalities in the crisis, but also had room for George W. Bush, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Then, in July, the 10 main names were all politicians or those named in the congressional investigations. They were, in order: Marcos Valrio, Lula, Delbio Soares, Jos Dirceu, Roberto Jefferson, Jos Serra, Geraldo Alckmin, Silvio Pereira, Jos Genoino and Renilda Fernandes.
2 – Some topics don’t get coverage in newspapers with or without the crisis. It is important that Rev. Luciano call attention to the topics that he considers badly covered, but in general, they are always badly done. As for Folha, of the three topics mentioned, one of them, health, has gotten special attention by the newspaper and was the sixth most-covered topic in the first half. The others, agrarian reform and retirees, really are ignored.
Coverage of this topic centers on land occupations. Retirees? The archives found four stories in July: three briefs in the activities and daily news sections and one story about consumption, in the business section. I imagine that Rev. Luciano was not referring to this type of coverage.
3 – The bigger problem I see is that coverage of the crisis is not an “exaggeration” of play, but the way this is utilized. In summary, there are many smaller stories occupying a lot of space, lacking judgment about the importance of facts revealed and there is little analysis and inside information that help to understand what is happening.
BASE SCHOOL
The press found guilty
Folha was required on Thursday, in the second court decision, to pay 750,000 reals (about US $315,000) in damages to the owners of the Base School and the driver who served the school.
The three were accused in 1994 by police in So Paulo of sexually abusing children who studied at the school.
The accusations were widely reported by the press. The accused were threatened with death, and the private school was ruined and closed down.
After proving that the accusations were unfounded, the three were found innocent. They sued for damages against the So Paulo state government (they won in all decisions) and against the main news organizations.
Folha, “O Estado de So Paulo” (damages of 250,000 reals for each of the three victims) and the weekly news magazine “Isto” (200,000 reals) lost the second decision. The Globo TV network lost the first decision (the equivalent of 1,500 minimum wages for each one). The Bandeirantes TV and radio networks and the Brazilian Television System (SBT) won the first decision, but the verdicts were vacated and there were new trials. Abril Publishing awaits judgment. In all cases there could still be appeals.
In the case of “Isto” a judge considered that the wrong amount was awarded, the facts weren’t exaggerated and the blame for the so-called “moral lynching” was by police authorities. But this was not the understanding of other appeals judges, and the magazine lost.
In the case of Folha, the appellate courts ignored the argument that coverage was based on official information from government authorities and technical analysis. According to the “legal counsel,” government authorities understand that “the right to information and freedom of the press are sustained in care for the honor and dignity of people.”
This is such an emblematic case that I ask myself why companies found guilty still insisted on the appeals.
Publicity agencies
The theme of my column “The crisis that propagates itself” (July 31), in which I dealt with the involvement of publicity agencies in the “allowance” scandal, I received a letter from the press adviser for Conar (the National Council for Self-Regulation of Publicity), Eduardo Correa:
“About your column, I must say that: 1 – It is not and never was the function of Conar to judge the business behavior of publicity and advertising agencies. Conar focuses only on content of the publicity messages using the Brazilian Code for Publicity Self-Regulation, in the interest of consumers and the market itself.
“2 – Your judgment that Conar’s actions seem insufficient ‘to confront the problem of taking care of society’ is, in the best of hypotheses, premature. Active for 25 years, Conar has already judged nearly 6,000 ethical representations, the result of complaints by consumers and authorities, or based on the activity of monitoring Conar, always guaranteeing wide rights of defense to the parties involved and giving total transparency to the release of the results of the demands. All this without any trace of censorship, counting exclusively on the work of volunteers, many of them journalists, and without costing a cent to public coffers.
“3 – Worse still was the general feeling of your column, considering self-regulation of publicity to be ‘insufficient.’ We don’t see the situation this way, backed by hundreds of contacts from entities in civil society and authorities that recognize self-regulation as one of the solutions for the state with inefficient laws, such as Folha itself did, in an editorial published Jan. 16, suggesting the road to self-regulation for the publicity of food products.”
I favor self-regulation, but self-regulation must work. If the role of Conar is not to judge the business behavior of the agencies, I am not far from the truth when I say that the instruments the sector has at its disposal might not be sufficient to act in the case of Minas Gerais and other agencies that demonstrate similar behavior.
In his second deposition to prosecutors, on Aug. 4, Marcos Valrio referred to some agencies that way: “Activity in the publicity area in a general way involves submission to political interests, without which companies would not survive in this market.” And he cited eight big agencies in Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo.
But we will wait. Cenp (the Executive Council for Standards) opened processes against the two agencies in Minas Gerais. The first session in the Ethics Chamber, to investigate “deviations” in the practices of companies DNA and SMPB, will take place on Thursday.
Translation by John Wright
