Stories without life
By Bernardo Ajzenberg
August 24, 2003
Every news medium has its own advantages and specific limitations. Where one wins, the other loses, which makes them highly complementary. One of the advantages of printed newspapers is the ability to show details that escape a camera or microphone, long testimony or the preponderant climateof a certain public event and inside information.
Along with the innumerable graphic resources available to print media, this possibility, when it is well utilized, gives energy to a story, making it provocative and rich. It makes a newspaper something different and indispensable.
Folha recently had at least three examples that ran counter to this, cases in which a bureaucratic and summary approach to the news sucked the life out of its potential and, for the most part, left out all sorts of valuable information.
On Aug. 13, a group of people formed the first flash mob (demonstration organized on the Internet) in So Paulo. In reality, it was a joke for a few seconds they tapped their feet on the ground but got a lot of attention from many people on Paulista Avenue (the main street in the citys financial district).
Despite having put a photo on the front page, Folhas story about the event was minimal. Worse, it did not carry statements by any participants, their motivations, or what type of people were there. The only live element in the story was the statement of a transit inspector confused about the event.
This lack of information and spice was repeated last Tuesday in a story about a demonstration by thousands of street vendors in front of So Paulo City Hall to protest the banning of a street fair on March 25th Street.
O Estado de So Paulo, for example, reported that the protest occurred while the national anthem played, that directors of march asked for order and calm several times; it described the words on banners and said that the street vendors were not received by the City Council president.
Folhas story had none of these details. It only told that the event took place, the location, the reason and that marchers made demands. Folhas competitor put the event on the top of a page, but Folha did not. This shows that Folha did not consider it highly relevant. That could explain the difference in play but not the lack of life in the story it published.
A similar lack of sensitivity and editorial vigor appeared in the way an unprecedented story was edited. A worker in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais state, believing that he was being treated for an ear infection, submitted himself unknowingly to a vasectomy.
Despite having various language resources and graphics (a box or an illustration, for example) available to handle such an unusual story with comic overtones (probably not for the protagonist, but that is another matter), the publication of this curious event (on Wednesday, Aug. 20) followed the same characteristics of the other stories on the same page (So Paulo will be the first to receive property tax payments or Only schools with sex education will have condoms, for example).
The loss in matters such as this is not always visible or immediate. Over time, however, the bureaucratic approach and mere relating of such events proving a certain editorial accommodation that does not serve the richness of journalism ends up hurting the relationship between the newspaper and readers: In the end, why read a newspaper if everything was already reported on the radio, TV and the Internet the day before?
The more equals
On Thursday, Folha dedicated ample and coveted space (a teaser on the front page and more on the second page of the financial section) to news about the death of Caio de Alcantara Machado, a pioneer in the organization of business fairs in this country, on the previous day.
The news about the funeral and cremation of the body came out Friday in a small note at the bottom of page B2 of the same section. This disproportional mistake would not merit comment in this column were it not for a serious mistake that it carried.
The fact is that, as radio and TV reported Thursday night, cremation of the businessmans body was suspended, delayed when it had already started, for 15 days by a court order. The motive: Two of the children went to police with the accusation that the death was the result of poisoning, in this case, by the businessmans girlfriend. The police began an investigation. The body is being kept at the Coroners Office for tests.
Did you read anything about this in Folha on Friday? No, because the story in question made it look like everything (the cremation) went ahead as planned: After the funeral, the body was taken to the crematorium at Vila Alpina Cemetery, where there was a ceremony in an ecumenical chapel and ended that way.
According to the managing editors office, the newspaper had access to information that the cremation did not take place because two of the businessmans children suspected poisoning, but considered it a family matter, a suspicion not proved by testing.
The prudence is praiseworthy, but does not justify the omission from readers about a public decision by a court and an initiative by police, in which there was no doubt.
The same caution, by the way, was not seen in Thursdays edition, when the newspaper published at the top of the page a photograph and name of a waiter suspected we are in the same territory, suspected of killing businessman Jos Nelson Schincariol on Monday night in Itu, So Paulo state.
The idea that all citizens are equal before the law seems to prevail here. But for the newspaper, some are more equal than others.
Misleading communication
A mistake in putting together page 1 in the national edition on Sunday, Aug. 17, generated complaints to the ombudsman from more than 30 readers in five states. There it announced the existence of a special section about teaching languages. However, as a correction in the national edition pointed out, the supplement was produced and distributed only in the So Paulo metropolitan area.
A reader in Minas Gerais state recalled that a similar problem occurred a little more than two months ago in the launching of the Folha Encyclopedia (about which I commented June 15).
The managing editors office asserted that costs and journalistic interest made the newspaper limit the sections to certain regions. An example of the limitations for journalistic reasons is the regional sections, it said. But the section about languages was not circulated nationally because of costs.
The reader in Minas Gerias, however, has her own impression of the phenomenon: It becomes increasingly clear that any city outside So Paulo state has little or no importance to Folha managers.
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Here is advice for subscribers who use the Internet: The section can be found at www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/empregos/ce1708200301.htm.
