09/03/2008

Return of the cold war

By Mário Magalhães
ombudsman@uol.com.br

With two well-placed adjectives, columnist Eliane Cantanhêde commented Thursday "Latin America's extemporaneous and slightly ridiculous Cold War." I amended in my daily critique that I write about the newspaper: "In journalism in the Americas, the Cold War tone is not slightly ridiculous, it is absolutely ridiculous."

The South American crisis, which started with the invasion of Ecuadoran territory by Colombian soldiers to kill FARC rebels, exposed journalistic partisanship whose results are deplored by good sense.

Folha did not seem superior in its coverage exclusively for having sent more reporters, four, to countries where the conflict was concentrated --Venezuela is the third-- but because its approach was more plural, in the news as much as in divergent views by columnists and op-ed writers.

With only one way of thinking, readers are lost, but those with more elements allow opinions to be formed by the knowledge of opposing versions and opinions.

It's not that the newspaper does not make mistakes. In recent months, references in the world press have accumulated, including in Folha, about Venezuela's "escalation of armaments."

Now, I discover that troops and military equipment of Hugo Chavez don't match those of Álvaro Uribe by a long shot. It is logical: Colombia fights armed organizations in its own territory. But, before the crisis, there was the impression that in the event of hostilities nobody could take on the Venezuelans.

Folha headlined "Chavez now says he wants 'true peace.'" Why now? Did he want false peace before? I didn't understand. The good work by correspondents did not hide a deficiency: on the first days, they did not show the rejection by an overwhelming majority of Colombian people toward the FARC, from those on the right to those on the left.

It is not without reason: how can you sympathize with a group that kidnaps babies, a crime identical to that committed by the last military dictatorship in Argentina?

The dazzled press

I am confident from the start that I won't be able to resist information about espresso coffee machines: I read how they work, explanations about their features, price comparisons and am delighted by the designs.

I would never be willing to pay the fortune they charge for these imported products, not even by the unequaled ones "made in Italy." I salivate, meanwhile, just thinking about drinking a coffee cup filled by those gadgets.
Service journalism is like that: it helps those who need to choose and informs those who don't want or can't buy. There is a supplemental curiosity to offering service about consumption: it chronicles a portion of Brazilians. In stories about behavior, there is more interest: it tells a wide public about the lives of the fortunate minority.

A newspaper such as Folha should look at the whole country. As on Sunday: the front page reported on pulmonary disease, common during the Industrial Revolution and which affects miners in southern Brazil, while the Magazine printed a story, "Map of luxury."

The headline was not an exaggeration: it described the "arrival of a new mall which should arouse competition for customers willing to pay 30,000 reals (about US $17,500) for a purse." It is an opportune topic.

Already from the start, it showed a "typical consumer who has the power of luxury business." It noted: "(She) is well informed, has demanding taste and --like any human being-- also buys on impulse."

I believe it all, but not that everybody "buys on impulse." It is difficult to imagine starving people paying for a kilo of rice on "impulse." Only if the impulse is hunger. And many people who are neither destitute nor impulsive buy only for necessity.

A trap of this type of reporting is to believe that your own little world is the whole world. It suggests a certain kind of journalistic elitism: imagining that life for everyone is equal to that of some.

Journalism sells illusion about CPMF (financial transactions tax)

On the same day, on Feb. 27, under the headline "Without CPMF, tax collections rise 9.6 billion reals (US $5.6 billion)," Folha reminded: "Emphatic signs have begun to arise that the Lula administration misled public opinion in the debate about renewal of CPMF."

My impression was that Folha and a significant portion of journalism were co-authors of the illusion pushed by the government: without extending the tax, the budget would be cut by 20 billion reals (US $11.75 billion).

The newspaper give this opinion: "The abrupt end to charging the CPMF was not the best outcome."

Maybe it wasn't, but the most consistent idea in the news was that there was no way to compensate for the tax, which expired in December.

There was, as was shown by the surplus of federal collections in January.

Minimum wage rises; newspaper repeats old number

Folha headlined on the Saturday before last, March 1: "Minimum wage goes to 415 reals (US $245)." The subhead clarified: "Goes into effect today."

The same day, in the business section, the economic indicators fixture set the value of the minimum wage in March: 380 reals. On Sunday it repeated: 380 reals. Ditto Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, until a reader complained. On Thursday, it updated the information. Yesterday a correction appeared.

This episode reaffirmed a problem at the newspaper: a sometimes pachyderm-like nature in the agility to change information in a fixture --such as daylight savings time, when it delayed in fixing the page listing time zones.

The difference in time between Brasília and Buenos Aires was corrected only after an alert from a reader. There are occasional discrepancies in sports tables.

Circle of readers is good news

There are two ways to look at the news that Folha reported last Sunday about the start of the "Circle of Readers" project: the newspaper will listen to its public and collect observations and ideas; or take advantage of them to make a better newspaper tomorrow than it is today.

I prefer to bet on the second hypothesis. The new promotion of monthly meetings of 10 readers with a group of editors is a good one. According to the announcement, "the meetings will seek to evaluate the editions, collect criticism and come up with ideas to improve the newspaper."

Readers, spectators, listeners and Internet surfers demand increased participation in our journalistic endeavors which inform them. More demanding and critical, they don't want to only speak, but also to influence.

-Translation by John Wright