Since Aug. 21 through last Friday, there was not a single edition of Folha which did not have at least one story or some reference to the film City of God, which came out just two days ago.
That doesnt even count the material that has shown up intermittently, but regularly, in the newspaper since the film was exhibited in private screenings for presidential candidate Luiz Incio Lula da Silva of the left-leaning Workers Party (PT) on Aug. 6 and for President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Aug. 10.
It did not dominate Folhas arts and entertainment section in an obsessive way, but was like a fever that spread discreetly, little by little, throughout the whole newspaper. In the box to the side you can see how this happened, for example, over the past week.
Sunday: A story in the financial section told about a system of credit for small loans in the City of God slum, with a separate story about the movie.
Monday: The section for teenagers had a front-page story about violence in the slums using the movie as a hook.
Tuesday: An announcement promoted a contest in which the winner gets two free tickets to the acclaimed movie.
Wednesday: In the section about the upcoming elections, the director of the film told about his voting preferences.
Thursday: The section devoted to information about college entrance exams told about the movie. Finally, on Friday, on the front page and page 3 of the arts and entertainment section, there was one more summary in the Folha Guide for the awaited premiere.
Capillarity
I have nothing against the movie which I have not seen but have heard praised. What calls attention in this case is that as a cultural production, supported by the union of a realistic theme (violence/misery) and Hollywood-type marketing, the film manages to penetrate a news organization through all its pores, capillarity without the news organization itself even realizing it.
On Wednesday, aside from the elections section, the arts and entertainment section also published something about the film, this time critical, when a rapper from the slum accused the movie of being prejudiced. On Friday, the day of the premiere, an anthropologist in the same section considered it mistaken.
But none of this distancing solved the problem. In a certain way, it only legitimized the operation, giving it an air of balance. It remains hard to explain to readers that there is not some kind of orchestration between production of the movie and the newspaper.
This is the phenomenon, and it should be made clear that this did not occur, even from a distance, only in Folha. Then, what is the problem?
Its that this multifaceted flood of information about the same product, without controlled dosages, expresses the newspapers vulnerability when faced with a tentacled model of public relations and pressure subtle and sweetened here, aggressive and arrogant there adopted with growing sophistication by the so-called cultural industry.
As good or necessary a work of art might be, does it make sense for a newspaper to absorb something into its pages indiscriminately like a sponge?
Couldnt this give the impression ominous for its credibility of being manipulated, hostage to an outside promotion or to reward the lobbying effort? If you use the Internet or want to know everything about the movie enter Folhas on-line version, where there really is a special page just for you.
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Last Sunday you were informed by Folha that the performance by singer Caetano Veloso in So Paulos Ibirapuera Park on Saturday attracted 120,000 people, according to the organizers. Other newspapers mentioned 80,000 people, based on police estimates, a difference of only 40,000 people.
Which number should you believe?
In cases such as this, with crowds, its always best to inform readers by using data from at least two sources, something not done either by Folha or its competitors.
Someone watching
The photograph above of the drug trafficker Ratinho, imprisoned in Rio for suspected involvement in the killing of journalist Tim Lopes, was published by Folha on Tuesday, Aug. 27, but only in the national edition.
As you can see, the police in it are forcing the prisoner to raise his face and show it to the press. On the side, besides the main story was another story titled Police obligate criminal to show his face.
So this image, which also appeared in the main newspapers around the country, was changed in the edition that circulates in So Paulo and Braslia for a more traditional one in which Ratinho is standing with his head bowed and nobody was bothering him.
As for the text, it summarized in two lines under the new photo the fact that police required him to raise his face to be photographed and filmed.
The change was made by Eder Chiodetto, the photo editor, who believed that the first one was in poor taste and that the priority was the news about the trafficker being in jail, not the attitude by police. I maintained the most important information and saved the reader from an image that bordered on the repugnant, the editor explained.
For problems of communication, according to information by the editor-in-chiefs office, this decision was not discussed with the editor for daily news, Nilson de Oliveira, who, to the contrary, believed that the photo should have been kept beside the story telling that the police required Ratinho to show his face.
As you can see, its a controversial question, even within the newsroom. Especially since the death of Tim Lopes in June, there has been between the press (at least a large part of it) and police a dangerous type of complicity that makes the former applaud and treat actions by the latter that are clearly irregular or illegal as if they were normal.
For Lus Francisco Carvalho Filho, a criminal attorney and columnist in Folha, with whom I conversed about the topic, the fear of violence has made society tolerate on the one hand clandestine action by police (such as the case of the police intelligence unit in So Paulo) and on the other, the spectacle of police publicity (such as in the case of Tim Lopes).
I believe that the initial photo, even though it is shocking, does not cross the line of being unpublishable. At the same time, it clearly shows an irregular attitude by police, since, by the law, the prisoner is not obliged to show himself.
It is said that the place for criminals is jail. That is not the question. But there must be limits to tolerance while facing illegal actions by police. That is the feeling, for example, of stories that the newspaper published since the end of June about activities by the special police intelligence unit in So Paulo.
Somebodys got to keep an eye on this, and that is, without a doubt, one of the functions of good journalism. In this concrete case, the photograph you see above and the story about it both eliminated in the So Paulo/Braslia edition represent something in this direction
