02/12/2007

Chronicles of spilled blood

By Mário Magalhães
ombudsman@uol.com.br

Monday, Nov. 26 headline:

Prisoners suffer sexual abuse in five states, report says

Tuesday, Nov. 27 headline:

80% of stadiums need structural reforms

The headlines in Folha suffered from the same problem on Monday, "Prisoners suffer sexual abuse in five states, report says" and Tuesday, "80% of stadiums need structural reforms." The information, often available before publication, only got space on the pages after tragedies awakened interest in them.

Since the first half of March, when it was presented to the Organization of American States (OAS), the report prepared by entities that defend the human rights was already public --the whole thing is on the Internet. More than reproduce it, the newspaper could have searched the country for proof of the savagery that it denounced.

To the contrary, it ignored it, raising it to the level of front page news only after the discovery of cowardice against a 15-year-old adolescent detained in the same cell with men in Abaetetuba, Pará --yes, a tragedy.

A survey about the condition of dozens of arenas was already revealed on Nov. 1, at a press conference, by Sinaenco (the Syndicate for Architecture and Engineering). It took 26 days before it appeared in the newspaper. For readers to learn about it, it was necessary for a part of the bleachers at the Fonte Nova stadium to collapse on Sunday, killing seven people.

One month ago, there were boasts about this work as far away as Lisbon. TV showed it. GazetaEsportiva.net (a sports website) described the conclusion about the installations in Salvador, Bahia: "The bleachers are in ruins and there is a total lack of safety and hygiene for fans and even players."

Folha was transparent about the first study: it dated it and sent it to the OAS. It omitted, however, that the diagnosis of Sinaenco was announced more than three weeks ago. It glossed over the unprecedented information.

Reporting the negligence did not immunize against new calamities. Journalism, however, is more useful when it anticipates the facts: showing life as it is allows it to react to the barbarity (in prisons) and the danger (in soccer). It is more comfortable to photograph milk --or blood-- after it is spilled instead of imminent spills.

Journalistic insensitivity and barbarity in Pará

Folha ended the week with two reporters in the northeastern state of Pará demanding information about the case of the youth who was put into a prison cell along with men who raped her.

It started badly, however. The first report, on Nov. 21, ignored the Law of Children and Adolescents telling by extension about the girl named L., while the local Educational Council alerted that she was 15 years old.

For four days, the news followed the facts from a distance --lacking a correspondent in Belém. I wrote in my daily critique (which can be read at www.folha.com.br/ombudsman): "Ignoring this tragedy shows human, social, and especially, journalistic insensitivity. I return to the question: if violence against the girl does not move Folha, how can it be moved?"

On Sunday, it was finally in the first story reported and sent from there.

What is he laughing about?

Tuesday, Nov. 27:

On Tuesday, Folha reported that Aguinaldo Silva has quit the 8 p.m. soap opera; on the front page, the writer laughed. The motive: the photo is old, from when the show came out.

In money-laundering pipeline, the imbalance changed sides

A few months ago, I observed that Folha paid little attention to the same whitewash about the confusion surrounding the Brazilian Social Democracy Party in the state of Minas Gerais.

But on the Friday before last, the complaint of the federal attorney general against a Cabinet minister, a senator and 13 other various people got exaggerations in 10 headlines at the top of the page, under the refrain "Money-laundering pipeline."

In April of last year, Antonio Fernando Souza formalized the accusations against 40 people under investigation, including a dozen members of Congress and three former Cabinet ministers, among them many members of the governing Workers Party. They ran only three headlines with emphasis, below the rubric "Allowance scandal/time for conclusions."

Ten to three is the journalistic and historic disproportion. The biased distortion for the other side was not corrected. The sum of two opposing imbalances is not zero, but two pieces of imbalanced coverage.

Journalism with the soul of a press release

Brazilian journalism is not very critical in the coverage of public policies. That is what a prodigious checking of data from the News Agency for the Rights of Children (Andi) found, based on 15 thematic analyses of media produced from 2000 to 2005.

Andi analyzed 17,481 stories in newspapers in all states and occasionally magazines, about topics such as health of adolescents, drugs, child and domestic labor, education, violence and human and social development.

It found that a paltry 8.52% of them made demands on or blamed the government, whether the second term of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso or in the inauguration of his successor, incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

By not demanding, journalism hides limitations and failures in administrations. By not taking responsibility, it does not clarify the duties of the state.

Go to an interview and, by habit, it is limited in revealing the statements, promises and versions of authorities in a submissive fashion.

According to Guilherme Canela, coordinator of academic relations at Andi, "In the coverage of public policies, the media rely strongly on official sources. And not even 10% of the stories have differing opinions."

The result is this: journalism with the soul of a press release.

With or without sex?

Wednesday, Nov. 28 headline:

19-year-old youth becomes pregnant after using contraception

Readers pointed out the double meaning of the headline on the front page of the daily news section on Wednesday.

-Translation by John Wright