On Friday, July 30, Folha published a letter from reader Nassib Rabeh, who stirred up a hornet’s nest.
He questioned the term “terrorist,” which Folha is accustomed to using to identify armed groups, such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Hamas, which resist Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The letter compared Folha’s treatment of a story on July 26 (“Israelis move to close exits from Gaza,” page A8 of the world news section) with that of two other newspapers, “O Estado de So Paulo” and the French daily “Le Monde”.
Folha reported that Israel killed “six members of the terrorist group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.” “Estado” referred to the “militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat.” “Le Monde”, according to the reader, did not use the word “terrorist” and identified them as “an armed group.”
At the end of his letter, Rabeh asked, “If Folha considers that all Palestinian resistance groups are terrorists, would it not be correct to express this viewpoint to readers instead of making them think that this description comes from international news agencies?” The newspaper responded in an editor’s note: “Folha considers terrorists to be groups that attack civilians in a deliberate way.”
The note provoked reactions for and against Folha’s position, and the newspaper published some of them in its Letters to the Editor on Sunday (one for and one against), Tuesday (against) and Friday (one for and one against).
Jayme Blay, president of the So Paulo state Israelite Federation, praised the newspaper “for having responded … to the clearly intentional distortions from reader Nassib Rabeh that, if it did this, would utilize the jumbled words of some big news organizations which transform terrorists into heroes.”
Reader Jairo Luis de Mattos questioned the newspaper: “If Folha considers armed groups that attack civilians to be terrorists, it should, for coherence, always refer to the Israeli Army as a ‘terrorist army’ because they are always attacking, killing and wounding civilians.”
And now?
The differences
The coverage of conflicts such as the Palestinian one requires great caution. As with every war, the sides involved utilize every resource to win over public opinion. The search for balance and impartiality becomes even more difficult because Folha has no correspondent in the region. It depends on international news agencies, and the information is sometimes contradictory.
Let’s analyze the story cited by the reader. The letter summarized three distinct stories: demonstrations by Israelis against the planned withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip next year; the fear by the Israeli government that “Jewish extremists carry out an attack against the mosque at the Temple Mount” in Jerusalem; and the reference to the Martyrs Brigade.
In Folha, the last story came out this way: “Also yesterday, Israel killed six members of the terrorist group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in an action in Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.” “Estado” had somewhat different information. “Israeli soldiers killed with gunfire six Palestinians (two commanders and three militants from an extremist group and one pedestrian) …” One of the dead, therefore, could not be called an extremist or terrorist.
The Rio daily “O Globo” had the same information as Folha but changed an adjective: “… Israeli forces killed six radical Palestinians, including two local leaders …” I did not manage to find the story in “Le Monde”. “El Pas” of Spain reported that “six Palestinians died of gunshots by Israeli soldiers … according to Palestinian security forces, who added that some of the dead were members of the brigades.”
In just this small example we see how newspapers deal in distinct ways with the same topic and how the information they transmit is different. In Folha, there were six dead terrorists; in “Estado”, five extremists and one pedestrian; in Globo, six radicals; and in El Pais, six Palestinians, with only “some” of them members of the brigades.
Ideologically charged
Folha’s stylebook orients its journalists to use the terms terrorist or guerrilla “only in a technical tense, avoiding the ideologically charged positive or negative” (see passage above). As we saw in the example analyzed, it is practically impossible to avoid this ideological charge.
Suzana Singer, managing editor at Folha, said that the newspaper “is always open to debate and seeks to be sensitive to changes in the dynamics of social groups” but that the principle defined in the stylebook “means following the vision of Folha about this question.”
Asked if, by the criteria adopted, the actions of Israel could also be classified as terrorist, she responded: “In the opinion of Folha, the current Israeli government carries out actions that are the equivalent of those adopted by terrorist groups, in other words, adopts violent actions against civilian targets.” And she had an observation: “Note that the term terrorist in the passage in the stylebook can refer to individuals, organizations and governments, not to states.”
The international editor at “Estado”, Paulo Eduardo Nogueira, explained why in these cases the newspaper does not use terrorist: “The editors consider that terrorist is a label, and as such, ends up assuming a characterization of what one side in a conflict does to an adversary, pulling itself away from balanced coverage. We use terms such as militants, extremists or radicals to characterize Palestinian groups and avoid falling into the use of labels by one of the sides. This standard, it is good to emphasize, is used by a huge majority of quality news organizations around the world, such as ‘The New York Times’, ‘Washington Post’, BBC, ‘The Guardian’ and others.”
The international editor at Globo, Sandra Cohen, explained their criteria. “We use good sense, depending on the news we are reporting. Most of the time, we refer to Hamas and the brigades as extremist groups or radicals. We use the term terrorist to refer to attacks or specific actions carried out by these groups against the civilian population in Israel.”
I believe that Folha needs to be more careful in the use of words and in cross-checking information to guarantee equal treatment toward all the parties involved. It should not hesitate to condemn acts of terror, but it should exercise caution when identifying personalities on both sides. What is at stake is the future of two peoples and their image in the eyes of Brazilian readers. This discussion, obviously, does not stop here.
What the stylebook says
“Terrorist/guerrilla – Use only in a technical sense, avoiding the ideologically charged positive or negative. The term terrorist refers to individuals, organizations and governments when they carry out violent activities against civilian targets, even when it is not exclusive (they might occasionally hit military targets). Their objectives are essentially propaganda, even if they use military rhetoric. If it is not possible to apply these criteria adequately, use the term extremist, which has the disadvantage of being less precise. Example: the actions of the Unabomber, the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, and the bombing of a medicine factory in the Sudan by the United States.
“Guerrillas are combatants of paramilitary forces engaged in armed fighting to take power. In some cases, they commit terrorist acts.
“In case of doubts, discuss the use of these terms with editors.”
(Folha stylebook, page 100)
Translation by John Wright
