The week that the congressional investigation into the postal service bribery scandal began its work in the Ethics and Abuse Council in the Chamber of Deputies, the most important news was the police action which transformed the country, coming from journalist Elio Gaspari.
In his column on Wednesday, Doing right leads to jail, Gaspari told about the drama of engineer Antonio Carlos Hummel, director of forests at Ibama (The Brazilian Institute for Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), jailed on June 2 in Operation Curupira by the federal police with 92 other people accused of involvement in criminal schemes to cut down forests and take lumber.
Hummel was taken handcuffed from Braslia to a jail in Cuiab (Mato Grosso state), where he remained jailed for five days. He was released because neither the federal police nor prosecutors had any evidence against him and they could not indict him.
His jailing had big repercussions due to the number of people jailed, the type of crime it involved and because some of those jailed, such as Hummel, held important public offices.
The jailing was widely reported, but the release for lack of evidence was ignored by the press. The disgrace of engineer Hummel was only published two weeks later after he was freed, thanks to Gasparis column in Folha and in the Rio daily O Globo.
Folha took the care to put an excerpt from the journalists column, Jailing of Ibama director shows that doing right can still lead to jail, on the front page. On the following day, it did a story (Ibama director says he will sue prosecutors) and an interview with the engineer (Jailing is difficult wound to heal, says Hummel).
The prosecutor in Cuiab, Mrcio Lcio Avelar, said that the lack of evidence did not signify absolution. He must be right. But the concrete fact is that they had nothing on the engineer. This episode, as Elio Gaspari recalled at the start of his column, should make officials in the prosecutors office and the press reflect on their roles in the defense of the law and rights of citizens.
He is right. It is a difficult defense, however, because the historic complaint in this country always involved impunity. The mass jailings are being carried out for momentary satisfaction and anxiety by justice officials.
At this time, the pages of newspapers are full of accusations that are being investigated and may or may not be proved. It involves politicians, public officials, business leaders, ordinary people, and public and private companies. It is difficult at this time to distinguish between criminals and the innocent. And, for this reason, the press should redouble its caution in stories that it publishes.
The news about Hummels jailing by the federal police could be given, and if there is a mistake, it was by the police and prosecutors. But the press has the obligation to follow the cases that it reports so it can keep readers informed, mainly when they discover that an accused person is innocent. In this case, it should be published immediately. It is the most honest way to help fix an injustice. The press fulfills its role when it oversees and investigates rigorously. And it grows in credibility when it corrects.
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INTERVIEW
Newspapers and public opinion
Historian Jos Murilo de Carvalho is a professor at Rio de Janeiro Federal University and author of Citizenship in Brazil The Long Road (Brazilian Civilization Publishing), among other books. I asked him if the written press is fulfilling its role in following this political crisis and how he evaluates the importance of newspapers in the formation of public opinion.
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In the first place, there is something that people dont take into account when speaking about newspapers: how do you calculate the number of readers? The calculation cant be made only by the number of subscribers and by sales on newsstands. All you have to do is stand close to a newsstand for a while and observe. I would say that the headline and the front page on newspapers are read by 40 or more people in a day. There is a big impact that is difficult to measure.
Another point (favoring newspapers) is columnists and opinion pages. Despite the Internet and TV, I would say that it is here that middle-class people make up their minds. It is not only news by itself but reflection about the news and the analysis about politics. This is something that television doesnt do. In this sense, I dont see any loss of importance by newspapers.
One of the positive things today in Brazil is this: it is forming, maybe for the first time, a national public opinion. I believe that, in good part, this formation comes from television, but as to referring to those who form public opinion, they are still the newspapers. Facing the failure of the representative system among us, I believe that it was having an increasingly direct impact on the right to public opinion about politics and politicians. And this is what the media do in general, including newspapers, and especially columnists.
In the medium term, the role of the newspaper and its nature will have to be redone. I dont know if this is happening in Europe. I believe that it has not come to us at this time. At this time, it is said that the press has an important role, and I would not say that it is failing. I believe that it adequately fulfills this role.
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REGRESSION
Journalists and newspapers are running against time. They are used to it, but they work better when they have a chance to deal calmly with the most complicated topics.
And few topics are as complex as the surveys that the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE) puts out on an average of two per week. Some of them, such as the census, the PNAD (National Survey for Sampling Households), and the synthesis of social indicators and research on family budgets, are immense, impossible to read, analyze and synthesize in a journalistic format in only a few hours.
The haste, in these cases, results not only in mistakes but also in deficient and superficial use of documents full of data that could help understand the demographic, social and economic transformations that the country experiences.
An old deficiency in newsrooms is how little prepared they are to interpret the phenomena that are hidden behind the statistics and indicators.
For these reasons, since the advent of putting out data collected by the 2000 census, the IBGE changed its policy of relationship with the press. First, it began to distribute the results of its surveys in advance, with a commitment assumed by the media to only publish them on a date and time defined by the institute (embargo policy). Afterward, it puts its pollsters and experts at the disposition of journalists.
In the case of newspapers, this policy has three important consequences: it obligates them to have journalists specialize in the reading and understanding of surveys (through courses given by IBGE and in their own seminars), decreases the mistakes of interpretation, and it allows newspapers to change the way they use the results. The formula used to copy numbers and reports was substituted by stories about people, real life and critical analyses of phenomena and trends.
Journalists, newspapers and readers are the winners.
But, in a decision by the Planning Ministry, the IBGE is prevented, since Wednesday, from providing the results of its surveys to the press early. This way, the minister imagines he is obeying a decision by Justice officials who ended the obligation of IGBE to send its surveys to the government 48 hours before making them public.
The ban is a regression without rational justification and should affect the quality of the journalistic work and the ability to take advantage of surveys. It is a mistake in which everybody loses.
Translation by John Wright
