It is obvious that news organizations are unprepared to deal with complex issues such as public safety policy
The Saturday before last, the First Capital Command (PCC) gang kidnaped two employees of the Globo Broadcasting Network in So Paulo. The network was obliged to put a video with propaganda and demands by the criminal gang on the air or risk the killing of reporter Guilherme Portanova. He was released Sunday night. Here are some observations:
The kidnaping
The main discussion centered on the decision by Globo to meet the demands of the kidnapers. Should the network have shown the video? Most of the messages that I read gave their support.
Among the discordant voices, two were highlighted at Folha: columnists Elio Gaspari and Brbara Gancia. Gaspari said that news organizations “should respond to criminality with a policy of zero tolerance” and suggested that, with the risk of new kidnapings, they should announce that they have life insurance policies for all their employees.
Gancia said that Globo should have allowed the Secretary of Public Safety to try negotiations before giving in on their own. She proposed what she called a “radical solution,” that all the journalists sign a manifest that would prohibit showing videos or publication of texts in case they are kidnaped.
In my opinion, Globo did what it had to do: it put the video on the air, reported the event exhaustively and the reasons why it chose to honor the demands of the kidnapers.
I believe that it acted responsibly. Although it has a public concession, it is a private company and had two employees in the hands of the bandits who, since May, have been challenging the police in the state and already proved that they are capable of any type of cruelty.
Gaspari and Gancia are right about one point: this created a serious precedent. We should all be conscious of the dimensions of the problem, aggravated by the proved inability of the state, up to now, to control the situation.
And I believe that journalists and news organizations saw that the episode touched society more from the drama that the reporter lived through than the understanding that bandits have injured an institution of democracy, the press. Various stories and declarations by us have corporate stuffiness. It is not baseless that society has difficulties understanding the institutional role of the news media and the value of freedom of the press.
Coverage of police
News organizations are demanding, and rightly so, efficient public safety policies by elected administrations and candidates. But they should rethink their coverage about violence and criminality. Not in the sense of adopting more restrictions or censorship, but in the sense of professional qualifications.
The journalism of yore that was called police reporting has improved, and that’s a fact. We now report about crime and violence better than we have done in 30 years. The press evolved into journalism that tries to understand the social phenomena that surround the explosions of violence and criminality; it evolved into more professional reporting (less promiscuous) with police sources; and it is concerned (which does not show that it is all that successful) about not glamorizing crime, criminal organizations and bandits.
But it did not make the big leap in understanding that other areas of journalism have been obligated to make because of demands by readers and the asset of credibility of news organizations – such as in the case of economic and science journalism.
The problem today is not a lack of sources or lack of information, although they have been problems. The problem is a lack of understanding about the topic.
It is not just politicians who seem lost. The lack of preparation by news organizations to deal with complex questions such as public safety policy is obvious. We are no longer competing to be the first at the scene of a crime, but we are challenged to understand and evaluate public policies. Without understanding public safety policy, it is difficult to question administrations and politicians. Without understanding the procedures that should orient police actions, it is difficult to question them.
It is obvious that over the past 12 years So Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais have implemented distinct public safety policies. What were these policies? Did they get it right? Were they wrong?
Folha, and this is also true for other news organizations, did not manage through Friday to do a deep study of public safety policy in So Paulo in the decade in which the state was governed by the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), despite the crisis that has occurred since May.
The lack of understanding makes us accept as truth any information without having the ability to debate it.
Clvis Rossi pointed to the problem in his column last Sunday, “The magic satellite.” To free themselves of journalists, representatives of the federal government and So Paulo state announced that the military will cooperate with So Paulo police “mostly to utilize satellites to locate the PCC cells and intercept telephone calls,” according to Folha. Rossi asked the question that the newspaper did not: “How will they locate PCC cells by satellite?”
There are no technical questions because it lacks understanding. And it is not a problem exclusive to politicians and journalists. The impression that I have is that universities also have not made the topic a priority, but check the small and repetitive list of “experts” (the same ones always, like in “Casablanca”) contacted by the news media during each crisis.
Editorial rules
Coverage of the kidnaping of two Globo employees showed that news organizations have different orientations when it comes to some topics.
For nearly four years, news groups within the Globo Organizations have not used the names of gangs that run drug trafficking in Rio, such as CV or ADA, for the understanding that they want to avoid glamorizing and giving status to the gangs. The rule is now applied to the PCC in the news in So Paulo.
According to Managing Editor Suzana Singer, Folha understands that “omitting the initials distorts reality and fights with the news. We are careful, however, to avoid any type of glamorization of the criminals.”
Folha only reports a kidnaping if there is consent from the victim’s family. According to the stylebook, “Folha usually publishes all that it knows. But it can decide to omit information whose release puts public safety, of a person or a company, at risk.” In this case, it published on Sunday the name of the reporter after obtaining the consent of his mother, but it omitted that of the technician for not having made contact with the family.
Globo has another rule: “All kidnapings must be reported. No request for secrecy will be met.” But it prohibits mention of the amount of ransom and information about assets.
The two companies have the same justification: the safety of the victims. One believes that the more information that is available, the better are chances to guarantee the life of the victim. The other sees release of information as imprudent and putting the victim’s life at risk.
Translation by John Wright
