Thats how life is (not)
By Bernardo Ajzenberg
November 9, 2003
Folha usually does well with stories about power, whether executive, legislative or judicial. Despite some fluctuations, thats what happened with coverage of activities this week involving the Federal Police and prosecutors (Operation Anaconda) and of the two attacks against police in So Paulo.
Two other cases which emerged in recent days, meanwhile, reveal the lack of understanding and insensitivity of the newspaper, even in an indirect way, toward the affected topic, real life, the pocketbooks and daily lives of readers.
A few months ago, elderly people formed long lines to pick up forms and make requests to revise the amounts paid for retirement pensions. The deadline for this expires on Nov. 20. Folha did not pay attention to this mobilization. It only arose (a little) in these pages starting with another question involving the National Social Security Agency last week.
On Thursday, the newspaper in effect put out a story reporting that the government had suspended, starting Monday, payment of benefits to those above age 90 or who have been retired more than 30 years, alleging the need to re-register them due to fraud. This involves 105,000 people.
Two points here merit comment.
The suspension began on Monday, and the newspaper only reported it on Thursday (the Rio de Janeiro daily O Dia, for example, had reported the same thing a day earlier, on Wednesday).
Besides this, the story in Folha was simply factual. The only source quoted was official: the press office for the Social Services Ministry. There was no reaction from any retired person, no story about any real case.
It points out, in parentheses, that a heated element appeared in the story. It was at the bottom of the story, under the form of a comment critical of the Social Security Agency, that ample publicity should have been given to information about re-registering before suspending payments.
Even this opinionated paragraph, however, constituted something strange, as I pointed out in my internal critique that day: Without going into its merit, it (the commentary) appears to me, in any case to be in an inappropriate place … the precedent, I believe, is dangerous in relation to the separation there should be between news and opinion.
An identical cold tone and approach characterized the story on the next day (Friday) about the reversal by the government, which, facing the reaction, had suspended the blockade on benefits. Folha different from the approach taken, for example, by the Rio daily O Globo was unable to offer readers a picture, an expressive quotation, or a useful and schematic service of orientation. It did not show anything beyond official information.
Only yesterday, after Social Services Minister Ricardo Berzoini apologized to nonagenarians, did the newspaper decide to give them more generous space and differentiated content.
Folhas resistance to interweaving a serious problem with individual symptomatic situations was also shown in the stories about Lianne Friedenbach, 16, and Felipe Silva Caff, 19, students at one of the most traditional high schools in So Paulo. They went missing Saturday between Juquitiba and Embu-Guau, where they were going to camp.
The story came out in Dirio de So Paulo on Wednesday. Catching up on Thursday, Folha produced a robotic story, with archive photos of the adolescents face. That same day, O Estado de So Paulo carried a photograph of a helicopter in the middle of the bush, with police and Lianas father. Dirio carried interviews and photos (hot, with stories) of the two families.
On Friday, the same thing: Estado had interviews and a photo of the father and a photo of the place they were to have pitched their tent, interviews with friends of the couple (see box); at Folha, there were archive photos and a procedural text without any quotations.
You dont need extensive journalistic experience to know that even coming from a personal dimension, such topics retirees and the disappearance of middle-class youths touch readers deeply and this way become relevant in the news. They are just as relevant, meanwhile, in a more institutional dimension, such as Operation Anaconda and the attacks on police.
Folha, however, seems to put itself here in a false dilemma. It gives prominence to interpellation with power and its topics, valuing the reader-citizen at the same time it moves away from the same reader as an individual, with personal rage and dramas.
Would it be impossible for journalism to unite the two dimensions?
Shocking image
Shocking, revolting, low-level, visual aggression, bad taste, complaints, sensationalism, image of the most-popular newspaper, not within Folhas standards…
These are the adjectives used by some readers about the publication at the top of the front page on Tuesday, Nov. 4, of the photograph showing a computer monitor splattered with blood beside the cap of a police officer killed in an attack on a police station in So Paulo.
Photographs of this type generate controversy. The decision about their publication is, by necessity, subjective, as is the reaction by readers.
I reproduce, as follows, comments by Eder Chiodetto, Folhas photo editor, about the matter:
Folha avoids images, such as this one, which by their nature are dramatic, crude and bruising composition that shock readers. There are more subtle and less precise ways to narrate the violence and atrocities with images. There are moments, however, facing the barbarity, represented here by the attacks of a criminal organization against the state and against the population, that the newspaper must elevate the tone of its coverage as a way to alert readers. The image is equal to this: the sound of alarm. Disagreeable, sad, absurd and uncomfortable as the event that it tells about.
Paula Cesarino Costa, managing editor, backs this position:
The image is journalistically justifiable. In some way, it shows that these were attacks and not confrontations. The aggression pointed out by readers, in fact, is the aggression used by the bandits and we believe that it should be shown, that it is legitimate to show them.
I consider the protest by readers plausible. On other occasions, I have criticized photos published by Folha, based on the same reasoning. In this case, however, I tend to agree with the choice made by the newspaper. Despite being strong and uncomfortable, I think that the photo, for example, even not showing a body attacked, is within the limits of that which is publishable by Folha in circumstances as serious such as these.
