24/08/2008

A case of Olympic exaggeration

CARLOS EDUARDO LINS DA SILVA
ombudsman@uol.com.br

Brazilian mass media inflated the Beijing Olympics too much, far beyond the public's likely real interest.

Reader Marcos Tafuri watched the electronic editions of diverse newspapers around the world, finding that the attention and space given to the Olympic Games in other countries, including those with a great sports tradition, such as the United States, was less than in Brazil, and wrote to the ombudsman about Olympics coverage:

"I believe that our advertising market, for its lack of greater economic power, sees in grand events such as the Olympics a precious chance to commercialize those spaces. From there, the media companies, to justify this purely commercial demand, create in our imagination the 'importance of the Olympics.' That's fine. But there is a however in this story. The newspaper reader, by his nature, is a critical creature. In his critical nature, sometimes he fees betrayed when a respected newspaper, such as Folha, treats him like an idiot."

Maybe this is not the reason, but in fact the Brazilian mass media, including this newspaper, inflated the Beijing Olympics too much, far beyond the public's likely real interest in relation to itself.

For me, nothing was more symbolic of this disproportion than the top of Folha's front page last Sunday. The image of Michael Phelps and the news about his eighth gold medal was in four columns; the photo and information about the death of musician Dorival Caymmi was in two columns.

I bet that a few years from now (if that long) the relationship between Brazilians who know about Caymmi and Phelps will be the opposite of the space that the newspaper dedicated to both: at least twice as many people will recognize the musician as the athlete.

Few events in the news are journalistically more complicated than the Olympics, especially this one, in China, on the other side of the world, with an 11-hour time zone difference. The newspaper invests heavily to send a big team, and it is natural that it wants to see the maximum result of those investments on its pages.

Although the final result has not been negative in terms of information, the exaggerations were evident. It was expected that Michael Phelps would win more medals.

But from the start the newspaper gave him so much importance and in the end did not know how to be different. It ended up drowning his image in letters in a photo covered by words.

Hyperbole was the dominant note from the start, with a cascade of reverberating adjectives that described the opening ceremonies.

What mobilized readers most, however, was the photo of Diego Hypólito, published on the front page Aug. 18. Eleven wrote to complain about it and considered it disrespectful and humiliating.

I don't agree. The photo showed a fact. It instantaneously showed the perplexity of an athlete who hoped to win. But winning and losing are part of the competition. An Indian saying goes: "For those who compete against the best, even defeat is honorable."

The treatment given by the media to the Olympics in part reflects the social expectation that only winning matters, when the original Olympic spirit was the contrary.

Counter-advertising

Pages from the first section of Folha this week were attacked by a strange green plague. Dots of this color invaded the news space, especially international, and hurt its intelligibility and the comfort of readers without the faintest shadow of a doubt.

It was an advertising campaign typical of the obsession for "creative" ads to occupy the area of the newspaper which belongs to journalistic information in the hope of attracting consumers' attention. They achieved it, but the price they paid was high: the public's aversion.

Many readers complained to the ombudsman. João Nicolau Carvalho wrote: "What is their function (the dots)? To hypnotize the reader? It does not work.... The dots damaged this reflection. They generated dystonia between form and content."

Alison Sales complained "because the dots caused discomfort which simply prevented reading." Talita Vasques asked: "Don't let the 'creativity' of the advertising agencies denigrate the image of the biggest newspaper in the country."

The newsroom told the ombudsman that it "only vetoes extremes that disfigure the editorial image of the newspaper." I believe that this was an extreme case and that the campaign should have been vetoed.

I received innumerable criticism from readers who were bothered by the excess of advertising in recent months. I responded that, while most readers and journalists would probably prefer the newspaper without advertising, that is what guarantees the ability of the organization to be independent and have good quality.

It is one thing to have the discomfort of opening inside pages or separating sections about products that have no interest to most. It is another to clearly disrespect the essential right of readers, which is to read the product they bought.

It goes without saying that the campaign very likely shot the advertiser in the foot. But this is their problem, preferring this method.

To read

"Dreams More Than Possible," by Odir Cunha. Planeta (starting at 7.70 reals, or US $4.80) - brief profile of 60 Olympic heroes, among them Cassius Clay, João do Pulo, Jesse Owens, Nadia Comaneci, Mark Spitz and Maria Lenk

"Guide for the Curious - the Olympic Games," by Marcelo Duarte. Panda Books (starting at 27.57 reals) - useful and curious information about the Olympic Games, from the primordial days through 2004 in Athens

To see

"Chariots of Fire," by Hugh Hudson, with Ian Charleson and Ben Cross (12.90 reals) - the story of two English runners in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, its religious and social contradictions and the effort they made to overcome them and win the competition

"Munich," by Steven Spielberg, with Geoffrey Rush and Daniel Craig (starting at 19.90 reals) - the story about how, after 11 Israeli athletes were kidnaped and killed in the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972, the Israeli secret service pursued the terrorists

What Folha did right

Religion in the United States
A story about the look by Bernardo Carvalho into American religiosity in the arts and entertainment supplement last Sunday is one of the best journalistic works of the year

Nepotism
On the 30th anniversary of his column, Walter Ceneviva contributed a piece on Friday that was cultivated and prudent about the court decision that prohibited nepotism in public administration

Space program
Using the hook of five years after the tragedy at Alcântara, the newspaper did an excellent survey of the Brazilian space project during the week

São Paulo elections
Critical reports about former São Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin and former São Paulo Mayor Martha Suplicy rebalanced critical coverage of the main candidates for mayor in São Paulo

And where it was wrong

Artistic Culture
The first story about the fire in one of the most important theaters in Brazil on Monday seemed to be a registry of a mere police incident; after that, the coverage improved

Offshore drilling
A headline on Wednesday said that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva decided to create a state-run entity to explore the new offshore oil discovery; the president's contradiction came out on Thursday only on an inside page and without its own headline

Topics most commented during the week

1. The Olympics
2. Advertising that interfered with reading
3. São Paulo police strike

-Translation by John Wright