The crisis that has weakened the administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has also affected the press. As in other similar scandals, newspapers and magazines are being applauded and questioned since the weekly news magazine “Veja” reported on May 14 about a video tape that caught an official with the postal service red handed accepting a bribe.
In that edition and the following one, the magazine published accusations of corruption that involved Congressman Roberto Jefferson, then president of the left-leaning Brazilian Workers Party (PTB), who has since been removed from his position, and at the time one of the main leaders supporting the federal administration.
Feeling a lack of support from the administration, the congressman chose Folha to speak out, and in interviews published on the 6th and 12th of this month, accused Lula’s Workers Party (PT) of paying “allowances” of 30,000 reals (about US $12,000) to members of Congress who belong to two conservative parties, the Progressive Party (PP) and Liberal Party (PL), and are allied with the administration.
While the accusations were limited to the postal service and the PTB, the administration still mustered the will to try to prevent the formation of a special congressional investigation. Jefferson’s statements to Folha and his testimony before the Ethics Council in Congress, however, ended up with the presidential palace trying to accept the congressional investigation and the sacrifice of Chief of Staff Jos Dirceu.
The two stories in “Veja” and the interviews with Folha were the most important events up to now to sustain the suspicion of corruption in the administration and in Congress. Other newspapers, such as “O Estado de So Paulo” and the Rio daily “O Globo,” and the weekly magazines also published important information, but none of them have had the same repercussions.
The press became a target of various critics. The most subtle came from the nation’s chief prosecutor, Claudio Fonteles: “Is Brazil passing through difficult times? It is. The press went overboard on this, putting out exaggerated headlines. That’s life. People should not be afraid … because of this.”
The strongest one that I read was by political scientist Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos, a columnist at the financial daily “Valor Econmico.” In an interview with the magazine “Carta Capital” the same week, he blamed the press for trying to destabilize the government.
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It is probable that the press once again banished the great discussion that is behind the crisis: political reform.
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In his most recent column, “Coup-mongering with results is the strategy of the hour,” published Thursday, he made a direct reference to the owners of news organizations: “In the best of worlds, the scandal, which finally caught hold, could give rise to the first big shakeout in the strange relations between the private and public. It still won’t be this time, certainly, that it questions the price paid in political instability from the permanent dependence by news organizations on banks and official propaganda. Even less will they risk the possibility that politicians with positions in the federal government and owners of newspapers and TV stations regularly expose the respective declarations of assets, an initiative suggested by American journalist James Fallows. But something could be done, since ending the housecleaning in the government does not become a means of ending the administration.”
The criticism that I received from readers sent specifically to Folha can be summed up in phrases such as the following: “Folha is working against Brazil,” “Why does the newspaper give space to defamation without proof?” or “Why did the newspaper not give the same coverage and make the same demands in other scandals?”
The newspaper responded to these questions in an editorial published on Tuesday. “Accusations to investigate,” which said: “. corruption is a problem that has afflicted the country for a long time. And this newspaper, whatever the political leanings of officials, has sought to fulfill its mission to report the facts that come out – as occurred, to cite an example, as proof of vote buying in favor of the constitutional amendment to allow reelection (of presidents and governors) during the administration of then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Also, this newspaper has praised the activities of the federal police, who carried out operations against bigwigs and broke up corrupt gangs.”
The reference to the scandal of vote buying to approve the (constitutional) amendment which allowed Cardoso’s reelection in 1997 was recurring in those days. Why did the newspaper save Cardoso on that occasion and now is so critical of Lula? This was a question that I received.
It’s not true. With help from the news archives and a survey of the newspaper’s collections, I could determine that overall coverage was quite similar.
First, it was Folha that revealed the tapes that proved members of Congress had been bought, such as now it was the one that published the confessions of crime made by Jefferson and the accusations that he made about a corruption scheme.
In the 10 days that followed the publication of these two revelations, on May 13, 1977 and June 6 of this year, the newspaper’s coverage was practically the same: in both cases, there were 10 headlines, seven editorials, one editorial on the front page and approximately 60 pages of coverage. The tone was also similar: a lot of demands made of the Cardoso administration (in 1977) and Lula (now) in editorials, and all the columnists and guest op-ed pieces were extremely acidic.
There is one difference between 1997 and now: results. Cardoso, contrary to Lula, managed to prevent the formation of a congressional investigation. But I don’t believe that you could blame Folha for this. Also, the explanation is in a distinct political climate. On that occasion, Folha was one of the few critical voices, and its stories did not have the same repercussion in other news media as now. In an interview with “Carta Capital,” Professor Wanderley Guilherme attributed two factors to this difference: “We live in a period that is democratically much more alive than during the previous administration. The opposition now is a strong opposition . As a result, most of the press is with the opposition.
Opposition officials and opposition press (such as what Jefferson called the Globo Organizations) are labels, and as such, do not take into account what in fact is occurring, and it is important that it be that way. While showing that Folha’s coverage of the scandal about the “allowances” has the same characteristics as the coverage of selling votes, this does not mean that it is going well.
What the newspaper presented up to now that was most relevant was the series of interviews with the congressman. The efforts of the newspaper’s investigation did not show results until Friday, except stories valued for the heat of competition.
This is a problem in the lack of balance. In various editions, the defense of the accused was not given the same attention it should have gotten. “Letters to the Editor” spent two days this week publishing only letters against the government.
The effort to prove a willingness to investigate Congressman Roberto Jefferson resulted in two peripheral stories, the revelation that Jefferson did not declare to electoral officials his two apartments in Cabo Frio (Rio de Janeiro state) and the discovery that his son-in-law has a shell company.
The press is now a player in the coverage of the investigation of the congressional commission. The moment requires cool heads to evaluate the quality of the information that leaks. Yesterday’s editions of newspapers showed that they are shooting at all sides.
It is quite probable that the race in the competition will lead to newspapers banishing once again a great discussion that is behind the crisis: political reform that guarantees governability without the necessity of going after corruption or favoritism.
Translation by John Wright
