So near, so far away
By Bernardo Ajzenberg
December 7, 2003
President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva is making a sensitive trip to Arab nations. Newspapers reopened the dispute with new revelations about Operation Anaconda (a corruption scandal involving law enforcement and judges). With the formal accusation against a businessman, the Santo Andr case (the kidnap and murder of Mayor Celso Daniel) enters a new phase.
Despite these topics during the week, with undeniable general interest, what grabbed my attention most in Folha was two letters published Thursday in the Letters to the Editor. The first complained that the topic of lack of rain and the level of reservoirs in the So Paulo area is not getting the attention that it deserves. The reader posed various questions about the topic, whose coverage in the media, including Folha, has not been sufficient.
The second letter complained that the newspaper, despite highlighting on the front page Tuesday (Dec. 2) a photograph of people hugging the So Pedro Theater, did not publish anything on inside pages with details about the demolition of part of that traditional institution.
The two points supply of water and demolition of a theater have something in common: They dont shake the foundations of the nation, but they have a very direct impact on the lives of thousands of people in a neighborhood or millions in a whole region. It is about news that is useful to the public.
By coincidence, the day before, I was working on a questionnaire by researchers at Piura University in Peru about the ombudsmans duties. The sixth question was What do you consider the biggest flaw in communication where you work? I responded: It frequently ignores day-to-day subjects.
The existence of an explicit trend toward individuality, the supremacy of personal interests or places, to the detriment of the interests of wider populations, seems consensual these days in studies about behavior.
Folha does not bend to the predominant ideology in vogue, but it would not be wise to ignore which it shows. Like it or not, the newspaper should be obligated to take this situation into account at a time of defining new priorities.
The importance and priority that Folha gives and heavily invests, as is customary, in cases of great institutional, political and economic relevance to the country, are not being questioned.
Increasingly, however, one of the signs of journalism capable of being out front, in a proactive way and, at the same time, very close to their public, is consistency in prioritizing its agenda, in a systematic way not based on solutions or precise demands besides the big events, those others with a smaller appearance but potentially full of immediate implications for reader needs.
The two letters cited at the beginning of this column carry examples that the newspaper has not always been up to this challenge.
Unbalanced
Given the bombardment of information about who reads newspapers, listens to radio, watches TV or navigates the Internet, one of the specific advantages that the print media offer is the explicit hierarchy of news in which the reader, at least in this matter, believes almost blindly. Examples this week indicate, however, that Folha slipped on this account.
Last Sunday the Brazilian mens team won the Volleyball World Cup. The news, on Monday, got a photo on the front page of the newspaper, under a much bigger story about the expected victory by the Cruzeiro soccer team in the Brazilian Championship.
In the sports section, there was only a news story, without a picture, along with a weekly column about the event. I believe it was less than what the event merited (a historic campaign, as the story itself said, with Brazil coming out victorious over the 11 teams against which it competed).
On Tuesday there was another imbalance in a backward sense: The newspaper dedicated the top of a page in the national news section to statements by President Lula on the program Coffee with the President that, strictly speaking, did not say anything new.
Already on Thursday, to the contrary, the news that the Constitution and Justice Commission in the Senate approved the controversial Disarmament Statute (a headline, for example, in the Rio daily O Globo, which seems exaggerated to me, as I observed in an internal critique) was treated only as an item in briefs at the bottom of a page in the daily news section.
However, in such cases, the answers were not found in space, which I believe was flagrantly incoherent and did not pass unnoticed by readers who complained about this questionable news judgment.
Journalists as salesmen (2)
Serious information was spread by newsrooms and specialized websites in the middle of the week: the suspension of the daily column by journalist Joelmir Beting by O Globo and O Estado de So Paulo.
The Rio daily gave the news to readers on Wednesday, Dec. 3. The So Paulo newspaper did the next day. The reason: Beting, a pioneer and one of the best-known economic journalists in Brazil, decided to do ads for a bank. Look at reproductions in the box to the side.
Here is an argument by the managing editor of Globo, Rodolfo Fernandes, in an internal communique: His decision to accept invitations to make ads is not compatible with the publication of his column and is against the newspapers standards of conduct … inconsistent with a column especially, in this case, about the economy and advertising for a bank.
On the same site, Beting wrote that nothing in his contract prevented him from doing advertisements, political propaganda or protest marches. He believes there was nothing wrong with his decision, as long as there is transparency and not journalistic merchandising.
I already commented on the topic here (May 25) when dealing with a similar case involving a columnist at Folha.
What is at stake is not only individual ethics or Betings choices but the suspicion, exposure and weakening to which he subjects, even involuntarily, his column and the news organizations that carry it.
Every reader has the right to ask, starting with this double wedding (advertising and journalism), about the true ability of the columnist to be impartial in relation to occasional topics that cross in some way with the interests of the institution whose services he helps to sell. The conflict is, by principle, established.
Here, whatever the disposition of the protagonist, journalistic credibility, even being a subjective value, is automatically and objectively compromised.
Especially at a time of crisis at media companies in which pressures are growing in the sense of knocking down the traditional and indispensable barrier between ads and news, the attitudes at O Globo and O Estado merit praise.
