Read these two stories:
1) A bank employee was killed by a gunshot to the head Monday about 12:30 p.m. when two men tried to steal his Volkswagen Polo. He probably tried to resist the assault. Before they approached him, the thieves one of them apparently a minor and the other about 30 years old had robbed two bicycles and were being followed by victims when one of them ran into a car. After shooting the bank employee, they gave up on taking his Polo, and, to get away, took a Volkswagen Santana belonging to a taxi driver who was there. The bank employee was married to an assistant to a police official.
2) A pilot from TAM airlines was killed by a gunshot to the forehead about 1 p.m. when getting out of his Fiat Palio to try to prevent two men from assaulting a couple in a Chevrolet Vectra. After shooting him, the thieves about 20 years old rode away on a bicycle and ran into a Mercedes. After that, they abandoned the bicycle and stole a taxi to get away. The pilot was married to a police official.
The first story came out in Folha under the headline Thieves on bicycle try to rob car and kill bank employee on South side. The second, on the same day in O Estado de So Paulo, said: Pilot shot in head trying to avoid assault.
If it werent for one detail, everything would have been fine up to then. In both cases, however, the victim was the same, Joo Carlos Tavares Botelho, 49.
I did not include a third version, published in Dirio de So Paulo, with further differences but I wont occupy that much space with narratives in this column. When consulted, Folhas newsroom confirmed its information, based on police reports and a bulletin about the event.
Estado published a correction below a story at the bottom of a page on Wednesday, saying that Botelho was a bank employee and not a pilot (I also checked this detail with TAM on Friday). However, it maintained the version that he was killed trying to prevent a robbery.
In the original, the source quoted besides witnesses was an official with a special operations group in the police.
Dirio de So Paulo on Thursday still described the victim as an airline pilot; the initial source was a police official.
Who to believe
According to calculations, a third of Folha or Estado readers read both newspapers. That would total nearly 300,000 people, a number thats not insignificant.
In other words, it was one of them who on early Tuesday called my attention to the differences between the versions of the same story in Folha and Estado. Which one should I believe? one of them asked me.
Its not the first time that disparities have occurred between stories about a certain event in different newspapers. Within some limits, this appears to be inevitable.
On Wednesday, by coincidence, another reader pointed out differences between Folhas regional edition in the Paraba Valley and other newspapers in a story about the occupation of a ranch by landless peasants (differences of date, area, locale, number of families, spelling of names). In yesterdays edition, the newsroom admitted two mistakes.
Particularly in police coverage which depends heavily on reconstructions and witnesses approaching reality requires tireless checking of official and unofficial information.
If I had to choose from data available up to now in this case, I would opt for Folhas version as more likely to be closer to the facts. There are at least two reasons for this: Quotation of the police report as an officially documented source (even though police reports are not always reliable) and the newspapers tradition to assume responsibility for mistakes regularly something that other news organizations do infrequently because of reticence in a fixed section on page A3.
Still, some uncertainty hangs in the air, and it reinforces the conviction that nothing is easy for readers, especially those who read various newspapers.
Eduardo Jorge, redux
On Wednesday, Eduardo Jorge Caldas Pereira, formerly a top official in the administration of ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, released a note, reported by newspapers on Thursday, asserting that five years after being dismissed from his job, the statute of limitations to prosecute him for administrative dishonesty has expired.
He added that, despite investigations carried out in recent years by diverse institutions and offices, nothing against him has been found. Accordingly, he complained and proclaimed his innocence to the new federal government and press, saying the celebrated case against him was closed now.
Different from other news organizations, Folha did more than report the contents of the letter: It listened to officials in the prosecutors office another type of the other side who said that some of Eduardo Jorges rights remain suspended until the Justice Ministry recommends an end to the lifting of secrecy laws involving banking, telephone and fiscal records due to his supposed participation in the case of overbilling for the work on a courthouse in So Paulo.
In an internal critique, I praised the initiative to listen to prosecutors, but I criticized the fact that the newspaper also did not report the opinions of jurists or experts to give readers an opportunity to reflect about the question of the legal prescription (or lack of one) based on more information than the prevailing opposing opinions of both adversaries (Eduardo Jorge and prosecutors).
In the end, is there or is there not a statute of limitations in these circumstances? What does the law say, and how is it interpreted?
The main protagonist in the Eduardo Jorge case one of the noisiest during the Cardoso era certainly has an interest in seeing it closed. But it also interests the media which has invested tons of paper in it not in the sense of sweeping it under the rug or defining guilt or innocence (this is not the job of the press), but in the sense of seeking to contribute toward advancing its definitive clarification with the instruments at its disposal.
Disservice
About a month ago, after consulting Folhas regional listings, a reader in Guaratinguet went to the town of Lorena to see the film The Ring. When he arrived, however, he saw that the film on the marquee was another: Daredevil. The times and admission price were also different.
This reader registered his complaint with the ombudsmans department by telephone on March 20 and was quite indignant.
The newspaper admitted the mistake and proceeded to update the regional movie listings.
One step below irritation there was no dislocation, much less by city last Sunday I also experienced dissatisfaction with the newspapers service. It happened when a family member called a restaurant listed in the Folha Guide and instead reached the home of a man by the way, he was very irritated who said that this had been his telephone number for two years.
A correction in the case came out in Wednesdays edition. Information in the guide is checked weekly by Datafolha. In the restaurant listing they confirmed about 300 places, each one with 18 pieces of information (address, telephone, price, etc.). The newsroom, which publishes a separate list called other restaurants, took sole responsibility for the mistake.
Few mistakes bother readers more in relation to their everyday lives. The theme is recurring, and always worthwhile to check, because every time mistakes like that occur the credibility of the newspaper is tarnished.
