10/02/2008

Corrections increase. However...

By Mário Magalhães
ombudsman@uol.com.br

(fo1c)..

(fo1c)..

The delay in corrections continues with unjustified exaggeration; the time it takes to publish a correction was seven days --less than in 2006 (eight)

Folha reported in October that the protagonist on the TV series "Samantha Who" is a psychiatrist. By e-mail, a reader clarified: she is a lawyer. I raised the issue, and the newsroom refused to budge: "The profession... is correct."

I forwarded the response to the reader, who sent a link to the official website of the U.S. television show and reaffirmed: lawyer. The newsroom retorted: "The character really is a lawyer. The reader is mistaken."

If she is a lawyer, the mistake was the newspaper's. Only after a lot of insistence, two months later, did it publish a correction.

In August, it reported that an animal called a daddy-longlegs is a spider. A scientist wrote to educate us: it is an arachnid, but not a spider.

The newsroom said: "We do not consider it a mistake." I insisted, and the Quality Program concluded, after consulting five academics: the reader was right. A correction came out.

That was lacking after the headline in November "Cisco used stooge to donate 500,000 reals (US $285,000) to the PT (Workers Party), Federal Police say." As was proved, the police did not make such an assertion. Readers and I asked for a rectification. The facts topple the version. Even so, Folha kept it.

The same happened when it flaunted on the front page in July that an adolescent with a masculine name was pregnant. He was not, according to an examination. I lost in the effort to correct it.

Another failure survived, in a complaint about a story which gave an account that entrepreneur Paulo Zottolo did not attend the Cansei movement's protest (against a lack of ethics in government) in August.

He said he was there. The newsroom defended itself: reporters did not see him. Zottolo's spokespersons identified witnesses. The last letter from the newsroom conceded: "We don't discard the possibility that the entrepreneur went to the event." Instead of checking with those present, it went this way, without correction. It did not even produce rigorous verification.

Resistance to recognizing mistakes and correcting them is one of the biggest obstacles to transparency, credibility and the spirit of accountability in journalism.

Despite the hardball attitude, the newspaper has evolved. Last year, it printed 1,389 corrections, 148 more than in 2006. That number and the 12% jump are records since the survey began in 2004.

There were almost four corrections (3.8) per day. This adds up the mistakes and not the number of corrections listings because sometimes an item corrects two or more pieces of information.

More corrections may or may not indicate more mistakes. In September, a professor at University of Oregon showed that among 10 U.S. newspapers checked, an insignificant 2% of mistakes are admitted.

Even with the uncertainty about the total number of mistakes, the new numbers suggest a greater willingness to correct. If readers win more information, they lose it in space: on page A3, the corrections section shortens the "Letters to the Editor."

The delay in corrections continues with unjustified exaggeration. The time to publish a correction was seven days (7.34). Fewer than in 2006 (eight) and equal to 2005.

The average rose to nine days (8.67) if the number includes extraordinary checking into reporting in 2005 under the byline of a former contributor who was accused of being involved with a criminal organization.

Among the sections at the daily newspaper, the most agile with corrections are the front page (two days) and world news (five days). Of the supplements, the Folha Guide (the average per issue is 24 hours). Corrections are slowest, in the day-to-day news sections, in science (13) and national news (10; it was five days in 2006).

While it is not so bad in Brazilian journalism, Folha is far from the best standards overseas. Last weekend, we corrected six errors in information. "The New York Times" corrected 24, 300% more.

Credit card use by government employees

With good stories, Folha has devoted itself to the public interest in reporting about credit card expenditures by federal employees.

A gap in coverage became obvious the day before yesterday, with the first information about the use of credit cards by state government employees in São Paulo. Why did the newspaper spend weeks checking only one level of government, not paying attention to the other two (including the city government in São Paulo)?

At the request of readers, I asked the newsroom if it would have had the news if it had more time.

The response: "The newspaper's reporters received a list from a source in the PT on Friday, the eve of the (Carnival) holiday. With only this paper, there was no way to prove even the authenticity nor the veracity of the numbers. From the first instant, we did the necessary work of verification, following the checking procedures in the stylebook. The holiday, unfortunately, made the work more difficult and slowed it, since neither the São Paulo municipal government nor the Legislative Assembly worked until Wednesday.

"When we managed to finish the verification, we published the results with the attention that the newspaper believed it merited."

In my opinion, the problem is not the promptness. Why did Folha wait for the complaint from a political party to investigate the "São Paulo" cards? It is the job of journalism to monitor power, all power, without exception or selection.

And with serousness.

Translation by John Wright