03/06/2007

Journalistic fraud

By MÁRIO MAGALHÃES
ombudsman@uol.com.br

Representing a fake scene as authentic is fraud and undermines the credibility of journalism; a photographer is a reporter, not a choreographer

The photograph you see above, published by Folha on May 24, is not what it appears to be. It had more errors than those funny pictures where you are supposed to find the mistakes.

Some of them are:

1) All of the customers have left their napkins intact on the tables.

2) The silverware is equally untouched.

3) Nobody was served water or any other drink.

4) The women don't have purses, which is unusual.

5) The waiter comes over to serve coffee to a man who is still reading the menu.

6) While there is only one customer at each of the three occupied tables, the other plates have not been removed (the three are waiting for exactly three companions?).

7) A restaurant is an environment to relax, but the woman in the middle brings discomfort.

8) There are no appetizers, main dish or dessert at the tables (by coincidence, the diners looked recently arrived, while a man is drinking coffee?).

These are not coincidences: the photo shows readers a staged scene in a restaurant. It came out in the arts and entertainment section accompanying a critique in the "food" section.

The one who alerted the ombudsman was a reader, a gastronomic consultant, who did not want to be identified in public. The numbered observations above are almost all well-aimed.

The chef at Picchi Ristoranti, Pier Paolo Picchi, is not responsible for the farce. His business is to offer pleasure at the table, not journalism. Critic Josimar Melo, who was not in the photo, classified the new eatery as a good one.

By telephone, I narrated the doubts to Picchi, and he was direct: "You are right." Who were the people at the table? "I don't really remember, but they must be people who work here."

The chef recounted that as lunchtime approached, no customers arrived. He was present. Who had the idea for the staged photo? "Your photographer (at Folha)."
I asked for, and received from the newsroom, six photos. One shows an empty room.

I spoke to the photographer, Raimundo Paccó, age 40, with 20 years in journalism, a freelancer at Folha for a year. He recognized that employees of the restaurant were turned into "customers" and asserted: "I did not want to show the empty environment. I had no intention of staging a photo. To not disrupt the day's assignments and manage to complete two others, I ended up making a mistake. I really regret it."

The managing editor for this edition, Suzana Singer, said that the newspaper "did not know the photo was staged, and this practice is condemned at Folha."

Recently, a reporter on Australian TV network ABC "caught red-handed" children playing with a missile in Iraq. The sequence not displayed shows that he faked the scene, instructing the children into dangerous play.

The photographer at Folha did not risk anybody's life. But, with this content, the attitude is similar. It shows as authentic a scene that was false. He invented it. A photographer is a reporter, not a choreographer. This was journalistic fraud.

In 2001, as ombudsman Bernardo Ajzenberg pointed out, Folha had just published a scene in which a man was positioned by the photographer under a thermometer in the street. Fraud of this type undermines the credibility of journalism. With modern digital technology, it is easier to manipulate images. Readers, nevertheless, today seem more alert, which is very good.

Polar bears do not eat penguins

"Why do penguins and polar bears never meet?" asked the science section on the UOL news website. "Because penguins live at the South Pole and polar bears live at the North Pole."

On May 10, the travel section carried a teaser on the front page. "The ends of the earth - Ushuaia is among the places affected by an excess of tourists." To the side, an illustration showed a white bear, in other words, a polar bear. Ushuaia is a city 3,000 kilometers south of Buenos Aires. It has penguins as one of its attractions.

Reader Pedro Francisco Escames advised me: "I learned in a funny way that polar bears don't hunt penguins... because the former exist only at the North Pole and the latter only at the South Pole."

I sent the message to the newsroom, which recognized the mistake but did not publish a correction. It argued that the "little vignette" had "lucid, light, humorous content."

I disagreed: "The illustration (in this case) is an informative unit, not a fictional or lucid resource... If it informs incorrectly, correct it."

There was no correction.
Federal police, the great deciders of coverage

Journalistic competition in coverage of "Operation Razor Blade" was concentrated, through Friday, on the search for information verified not by reporters, but by the federal police.

At first, it was natural to be like this: the federal police investigated the diversion of public assets, through fraud in tenders for public works, for months.

They gathered evidence, recorded conversations, obtained documents and monitored suspects.

The investigation, exposed May 17, led to 48 people going to jail and the dismissal of Energy Minister Silas Rondeau, even without proof that he had committed a crime.

It was up to journalists to tell about the discoveries. There was no lack of information leaked about the inquiry. If it has public interest, it is legitimate to reveal it.

The problem was, in the second half of the month, the news was fed almost entirely by the federal police investigation. One of the few Folha stories that was the fruit of its own labor exposed the deals of entrepreneur Zuleido Veras, mayor of Mauá, São Paulo state.

On Wednesday, I pointed out in my daily critique: "The (telephone) interceptions revealed an interesting point about the relationship between the public and private. In general, however, the newspaper published many transcripts that don't prove anything."

The most important "scoop," outside of the investigation into "Operation Razor Blade," was in the weekly news magazine "Veja." It reported that Senate leader Renan Calheiros made payments of personal expenses through a lobbyist for entrepreneur Mendes Júnior.

Folha, besides practically restricting the inquiry, did a bad job covering the federal police's internal dispute. The federal police should be less of a decision-maker about coverage and more of a beat, an object of journalistic investigation.

Translation by John Wright