The weekly news magazine Isto last week published a report on its front page that sought to do justice to the former president of the Chamber of Deputies, Ibsen Pinheiro, who was removed by the chamber in May 1994. On the front page, in big letters, the magazine said that Ibsen was “massacred.” “Bad reporting transformed US $1,000 in his bank account into US $1 million and resulted in the removal of a strong candidate for president of Brazil.”
Inside, the magazine carried the following announcement: “The truth appears – Eleven years after being removed, Ibsen Pinheiro discovers that bad journalism caused his martyrdom.”
The main element in the revisionist judgment about the politician is an account by Lus Costa Pinto, a reporter at the weekly news magazine Veja in Braslia in 1993. In the story, granted by Ibsen in Isto, Pinto said that he received from Waldomiro Diniz, then an adviser to the congressional budget investigative committee, information that Ibsen transferred US $1 million from an account in the Caixa Econmica Federal savings and loan to another account of his at Banrisul bank. Pinto did not double check the money conversion to the dollar and sent the information to his editors the way he received it. He said that the night before the story ran, fact checking at Veja showed the foreign exchange conversion to be mistaken and that Ibsen transferred only $1,000.
According to Lus Costa Pinto, the magazine still decided to run the story with the mistaken report. He attributed Ibsen’s removal to this event. “The story in Veja had repercussions in newspapers for two days, the incorrect dollar amount was routinely corrected by the congressional investigative commission the following week, but Ibsen was definitively dragged down as the focus of investigations.”
Contesting
There is something wrong with this revisionist history, and before it becomes a new emblematic case on the irresponsibility of the press, it would be wise to study and analyze it better.
There was no way to do it how I would like, but there are some aspects that need to be taken into consideration. I read all the accounts and articles that came out through the week and I sought the editions of Veja, Isto and Folha from that period, November 1993, in the newspaper’s archives.
The fact that calls the most attention is the statement by journalist Adam Sun. According to Lus Pinto Costa, Sun had detected the error, advised the magazine’s editors about it, and still, the magazine printed the millionaire figure.
Adam contested the statement by Lus Pinto Costa. He said that the error in the money conversion was detected that night, but not on that order of value, and he insisted that for this reason the information was discarded and did not appear in the final report.
The value of US $1.1 million that Veja, Folha and other newspapers utilized was not the result of the transfer between Ibsen’s two accounts, which really was insignificant, but his bank activity between 1989 and 1993.
Isto did not use this total, but in the edition that circulated the same week as Veja’s story, it told about amounts transferred by Ibsen which were near the US $1.1 million that was furnished by the congressional investigative commission.
This number was corrected in the days that followed, but the amount that remained was still high. Ibsen managed to explain some bank activity, but not all. And his situation got more complicated.
Political environment
It was not the mistake by the reporter, nor was it even published, that resulted in Ibsen’s removal, according to Veja. He was removed, according to the Chamber, because of “proof of the practice and passive acts that characterize incompatibility with parliamentary decorum, notably enrichment without cause and practice of fiscal infractions.”
Ibsen was accused of “bank transfers and variance of assets inconsistent with declared income,” for wiring money overseas and tax evasion. Is it possible that he was innocent and that the judgment took an exclusively political course? That is possible. The moment was extremely tense and radicalized. But the story of the $1,000 that turned into a million still doesn’t fit together well today.
Anthropologist Carla Costa Teixeira of the University of Braslia and Political Anthropology Nucleus studied the Ibsen Pinheiro case in the book Political Honor – Parliamentary Decorum and Removal from Congress (1949-1994), published in 1998 by Relume Dumar Publishing.
About the removal of the congressman, she wrote: “… his truncated explanations, contracting a private auditing company to help him explain his bank transfers and the ensuing delays in his testimony before the banking investigation commission were decisive for the growing dominant opinion, inside the forum of Congress, concerning his responsibility.”
Accusations
There is no doubt that the press, and not just Veja, erred at the time. I don’t know if it was the case in this instance, but it is certain that the rush for exclusive information and what was described at the time as “a rush to accuse” led to errors that were not corrected and were unjust.
In the case researched by Isto last week, which was solid, I see two points up to now. First, Lus Costa Pinto erred, because he confessed that he condemned Ibsen Pinheiro to removal from office. Moreover, as I said, it is a story that needs to be told well.
A portrait of corruption
Newspapers live in an eternal dilemma: when they persist in coverage of corruption cases, readers complain about the excess of negative news; when the accusations decrease, the same readers accuse them of covering up scandals.
That is normal, and from what I understand as a journalist, it has always been that way. The point is this: do newspapers pay attention because of the topic and live up to one of their social responsibilities, that of monitoring the destination of public resources? More or less.
Transparency Brazil last week published a study, “News about Corruption in Daily Newspapers: a Portrait of Brazilian Inequality,” which shows how this coverage varies from state to state and is irregular. The study in its entirety can be found at www.deunojornal.org.br.
During the period analyzed, from July 14 to Aug. 13, 2,865 stories about corruption in 56 daily newspapers in all Brazilian states were counted. These stories dealt with 213 cases and related topics.
One-third of the stories (1,048) were published in newspapers in So Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Braslia. At the other end, newspapers in the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondnia, Amazonas, Roraima and Sergipe together published 139 stories, or 5%.
The numbers showed a rarified vigilance in Northern, Northeastern and West Central states. In Mato Grosso do Sul, local newspapers had 21 stories over the month that arose suspicion of corruption in some way. Even then, they were short.
Another problem that the survey showed is a lack of continuity in the coverage. The newspapers begin the cases, make a big fuss and then forget about it. According to the study, only 350f the 213 cases covered during the period stayed more than two days on newspaper pages.
At Folha, this happens frequently. Right now, the Kroll case, an exclusive story in the newspaper which showed that spying among private companies touched public figures and was a headline for two straight days, disappeared from the news.
Translation by John Wright
