The foreign policy of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva’s administration has given an importance to Latin America to which Brazilian newspapers are not accustomed. Our attention has always been toward Europe and the United States and almost never toward our neighbors.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to Brazil, Chile and Colombia; the confrontations between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and U.S. President George Bush; and the removal of Ecuadoran President Lcio Gutirrez in recent days gave unprecedented attention to problems in the region. But this attention probably won’t last.
I see structural problems in the coverage, most of them old.
First, the irregularity. Because the topic is not a priority, the coverage has no continuity. It arises from practically nowhere and disappears without explanation. The newspaper does not have continuous coverage of countries in the region and for this reason is surprised by crises. And the reader does not manage to understand why the topic, which did not even exist previously, suddenly became the most important one in the newspaper.
The crisis in Ecuador has been building for a long time, but the immediate cause of the president’s fall was the dissolution of the Supreme Court on Friday, April 15. The event did not get more than a small note in Folha that Saturday.
The newspaper highlighted the crisis on Sunday (“Ecuador descends into new political crisis”), but on Monday it did not even merit a brief story. The topic returned on Tuesday and disappeared on Wednesday. Here was the newspaper’s headline on Thursday, April 21: “President of Ecuador is toppled.”
This week we had another example. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the newspaper sensibly gave a great deal of visibility to Rice’s visit to Brazil and related Latin American topics, like the crisis in Ecuador and the tense relationship between Venezuela and the United States. On Friday, the coverage was mediocre.
The newspaper left out relevant information such as Rice’s visit to Colombia, the failure of billions of dollars sent by the United States to repress drugs in Colombia and Chavez’s meeting with Fidel Castro in Cuba.
The other problems result from a lack of continuous coverage. Because the topic is not a priority, the newspaper does not manage to have a team of specialized journalists and coverage is improvised. Folha today has only one journalist in the region, a rookie based temporarily in Buenos Aires. This paucity of correspondents reflects the lack interest in Latin America and the lack of investments by the newspaper.
The natural result of this situation is total dependence on international news agencies, which also give priority to the United States and Europe, as well as slowness at understanding the gravity of events. Folha, for example, was slow at getting a reporter to Quito.
Haiti is a different problem. The Brazilian press experienced a surge of patriotic pride when the government sent troops to that country. All the signs now indicate that the intervention has turned into a serious problem for Brazil. The weekly news magazine “Isto” already did a story on the topic. Folha also did one, but neither story provided the scope that the topic requires. They lack the journalistic investment and enthusiasm that marked the coverage of the arrival of the troops.
Badly informed press
Gilberto Dupas is an economist, head of the International State of Affairs Group at So Paulo University and president of the Institute of Economic and International Studies.
——————————————————————————–
Ombudsman – Is it possible to be well informed about Latin America from reading newspapers?
Gilberto Dupas – No. Latin America is a low priority in the Brazilian press, including Folha. The region only makes the news when there is a crisis in Ecuador, a moratorium in Argentina, a landslide somewhere in Brazil or the Haiti mission.
Ombudsman – Do newspapers analyze well the events that occur in the region?
Gilberto Dupas – I respond in the context of the world press, not only the Brazilian: there is a sensitive loss of analytical quality. I don’t know if it has to do with a progressive “downgrade” in the standards of journalists or an excess of very young people replacing the heavyweights. In general, the press is not the best place to find systematic analyses, with relative depth, that put Latin American topics into context. Except in moments of crisis.
FROM READERS
The press and racism
I received messages about the comments I made concerning the situation involving Grafite, a player on the So Paulo soccer team (“The press in the Grafite matter”), in my last column. I will reproduce passages from some e-mails.
——————————————————————————–
“My question: is it true that only white male journalists have opinions about the topic of racism? Is it possible that they write what interests them, what they believe, what they conclude, what they feel? I stopped subscribing to Folha precisely because the topics about those of African descent are written by representatives of all the immigrant communities who live in Brazil, and once in a while, a black writes something. This newspaper has no black journalist, but it always writes about quotas, has stories about something unilateral that is inconceivable, always lacks the other side, lacks fairness and mainly, as I asserted, “quality, balance, pluralism and diversity.” I hope Folha soon has black journalists to make the newspaper more democratic and not be an island of like-minded thinking.”
-Elenice Oliveira, So Paulo
——————————————————————————–
“It is incredible that the topic of racism divides the opinions of columnists, even though some don’t notice that they reinforce structural factors of racial discrimination instead of unveiling it. The discomfort is generalized. I believe that it is healthy. Is that a sign of change? I don’t know, but there are already desperate readers who don’t know what to think. Columnist Soninha was the first courageous journalist to admit “I don’t know” what to think. It is not in vain that a woman made this contribution because she has an identity subject to discrimination because racial and social discrimination is generally suffered by blacks and woman, the preferred victims historically.”
-Humberto Miranda do Nascimento, Campinas
——————————————————————————–
“Your column, albeit lately, finally approached the topic of Grafite. Like many, but a little more cautious than (soccer star) Tosto – who wisely pretended that he said nothing. You also must pretend that nothing happened. Folha’s efforts to excuse the Argentine player, disguised as a “search for the truth” and “justice” is praiseworthy. I hope that in any other situation that involves a black person there is the same effort. You are not black and will never be able to know how sad it is, how shocking, injurious and disappointing it is to be called a Negro. Whenever we are called Negroes it is racism. The Grafite case shows that racism is much bigger than it is imagined by the press, including at Folha.”
-Lauro Brito de Almeida, Curitiba
Translated by John Wright
