The way the press has treated the illegal telephone wiretaps in Bahia state generated various questions, and certainly, I will have to come back to those in coming weeks.
None of them, however, provoked more clamor up to now than this: Why is lawyer Adriana Barretto, one of the people who was bugged, described by the press as a former girlfriend and not former lover of Sen. Antonio Carlos Magalhes, the main suspect as the architect of this irregular espionage?
This item is far from being the cases most relevant in political terms. But its not irrelevant that it has provoked the biggest number of messages to the ombudsman since the topic appeared.
They dont conform to what a reader called perceptibly differentiated treatment given by the press, including Folha, to one of Brazils most powerful men. I asked the editors in the newsroom the motive for the choice. Here was their explanation:
Folha avoids providing information about the intimate life of people in the news. It allows exceptions when aspects of the persons intimate relations appear to be linked to information of public interest, such as the telephone wiretap saga, which some call Bahiagate.
It initially adopted the description of former friend to apply to Adriana Barreto in relation to Antonio Carlos Magalhes. Starting at the moment in which she said publicly that she maintained a romantic relationship with the senator and this was not contested, the newspaper adopted the term of former girlfriend.
It preferred this term instead of former lover because it is commonly understood that the latter expression, with the passage of time, has taken on a negative connotation, implying a value judgment about the conduct in question. Folha considers that the intimate life of people is their own.
Such norms are useful for terminology employed in the news. Columnists have used, with their own criteria, different descriptions.
On the past two Fridays columnist Barbara Gancia questioned the choice vigorously, in columns curiously called Did lover change names? and Lover changed name, part 2.
In my internal critique, on Feb. 21, I mentioned my agreement with her.
Precision
There are logic and prudence, no doubt, in the rationale of the editors. But they, I believe, dont take into account two of the basic and valuable journalistic principles at Folha itself: precision and impartiality in treatment.
Up to the time this column was completed, no story has mentioned the fact that Magalhes is a married man and that, furthermore, Adriana Barreto wasnt exactly a girlfriend. It lacked, at the very least, what is described in the newsrooms internal jargon as context for the information.
Its true that the term lover sounds negative, pejorative, even moralistic. Its true that Brazils most popular dictionary includes the word girlfriend as a possible synonym for lover. But its also true that up to now there is no other word in our language that expresses the same meaning with equal clarity, simplicity and exactness (the basis of journalistic stories).
Impartiality
Besides this, the sensitivity of the newspaper in such a delicate matter is not shown so sharply in other recent events (see the graphic above). And there is no doubt that here lies the biggest motive for irritation for various readers.
The word lover was used without euphemisms, for example, in the news about the murder of journalist Sueli Jacinto in December in Praia Grande, So Paulo state. According to the story, an adolescent linked romantically with the victims husband was allegedly involved in the killing.
Considering the arguments of Folhas editors, the fact that the information was attributed to the police did not justify in and of itself the use of the word lover instead of, for example, girlfriend.
A letter published Jan. 4 in Letters to the Editor criticized this posture by the newspaper, particularly because it involved an adolescent. Despite this, the same thing happened again at the end of January in stories about a woman who was ripped apart by plastic surgeon Farah Jorge Farah in So Paulo.
The headline on the story on Jan. 28: Doctor is accused of rending lover.
Greater and lesser
Could it be that for politicians the descriptions of extramarital affairs receive diverse words instead of those used for simple mortals? complained a readers e-mail. That is a question that even acquires a strong symbolic meaning.
It could appear to be the case, but it should not be treated as a smaller problem, a linguistic detail or semantic taunt. Omitting from the public the fact that Magalhes is a married man, sacrificing the exactness in the word girlfriend instead of lover in the coverage of Bahiagate in which clearly private life and public life (in the case of the senator) overlap treatment of the news by the press can lead to the interpretation that there are greater citizens and lesser citizens.
Few blunders are more harmful than this one, over time, for credibility.
The evolution of corrections
The table to the side shows the evolution of the absolute number of corrections published annually in the newspaper since 1998 and also, through an index, of the media by pages carrying editorial content.
It is based on a survey made for Folha since the corrections section, on page A3, which began publication in January 1991 as an expression of the newspapers commitment to transparency.
In 2002, 660f the 1,039 corrections counted referred to errors of information. Second place, far below (10%), referred to programming (TV, movies, events). The newspaper does not have a format for fixing possible grammatical errors. Its difficult to tell if all the errors committed daily are in fact corrected (suppose that some, at times, arent known by the newsroom).
But the rate of the average number of corrections per page with editorial content (which took the year 1998 as a base 100) shows small fluctuations, expressing, in principle, the willingness of the newspaper to apply the rules of its stylebook which instructs Folha to correct, without euphemisms, the mistakes that it makes. If at times there is a delay, that is another question.
On the other side, it could also express, in theory, that, despite efforts to the contrary, it continues to make plenty of mistakes, with regularity.
Last year, the daily average of corrections, according to the survey, was 2.85, compared with 3.45 in 1998 (when, its necessary to point out, the newspaper had 18% more pages devoted to editorial content).
