14/09/2008

About little murders

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

The killings of Isabella, Igor and João are humanly the same size. But the media and public treat them differently

The case of Isabella Nardoni, killed in March, allegedly by her father and stepmother, got a month of intensive coverage, sometimes compulsively hysterical, by the mass news media.

Close to 100 readers commented to the ombudsman about the tragedy and opined about how the newspaper and its competitors treated it. The father of the girl is a judicial consultant, and the stepmother is a law student. The crime occurred in a middle-class São Paulo neighborhood.

Last week, there was another horrendous murder of children, Igor and João, followed by quartering, in which the suspects are also the father and stepmother of the dead. The father of the children is a watchman, and the mother is a domestic servant. The drama unfolded in a city on the periphery of São Paulo. Four messages came to the newspaper about it.

Caio N. de Toledo, an attentive and critical reader of the newspaper, with fine and intelligent irony, tied the two news events together and expected that journalistic treatment would be very unequal for Igor and João: "It would be fitting to know now how many weeks the news in newspapers and on TV will be occupied with the case."

Toledo is right. The media were not so occupied by Igor and João, contrary to the Isabella case. There was nothing that even remotely resembled the public commotion that Isabel's death provoked.

Is it the media that determine the degree of curiosity by the audience for certain topics and not others, or is the public's interest that orders priorities in the news media? The question is as difficult to respond to as the attempt to discover which came first: the chicken or the egg.

Journalism is not science, but it does have rules. One of them is that the degree of importance of an event is directly related to some characteristics, among them proximity: the closer, the greater interest. An earthquake in São Paulo is more important than another one the same size in India.

Empathy between readers and people in the news is another determinant of relevance: the more identification between both, the more notable it is; there is more interest in those who seem similar than those who are different.

Igor and João had as much right to live as Isabella. Their "little murders" are humanly the same size. But the media and public treat them differently.

Still, it is possible to carry out good journalism. Folha did little, raising aspects about what is the Children's Council, which sent the children back to their executioners. It could have done much more by promoting a debate about this public institution with much more intensity.

The same way it could have exploited the psychological aspects of the crime. The reporter of an accurate story attracts the attention of readers, not by the proximity of the event nor empathy for the people, but for the enormous compassion that the news could awaken. Unfortunately, it fell far short of what it could and should have been.

Internet and elections

The second international seminar about on-line journalism, called Media On, took place this week in São Paulo. One of the topics was the Internet in the American presidential election this year.

The 2008 election is for the Internet what 1960 was for TV: it is the first in which this medium of communication, which existed earlier, assumed a really dominant role.

The Internet has in this campaign more relevance as an instrument of political action than as a means of communication. Barack Obama collected the biggest part of his funding with donations made through the web (75% of his $372 million through July 31 came this way) and utilized it as an efficient form of regimentation and organization of supporters.

But the public also has come to value on-line journalism for information about elections more than ever in the past. A survey by the Pew Research Center, cited by journalist Francisco Mendez, found that 24% of Americans say they used the Internet as the principal medium to get news about the campaign.

Still it is less than TV (32%) and printed newspapers (31%), but it is higher than the percentages in 2004 (13%) and 2000 (9%). Mendez also found that some blogs have provided the major press with information sometimes obtained in an ethically questionable way (such as a blogger who infiltrated a meeting of Obama volunteers, pretending to be one of them, and revealed indiscreet commentary heard from the candidate).

Some sites, such as www.realclearpolitics.com and www.politico.com, became obligatory reference points for everyone interested in the campaign, thanks to the strictly anti-partisan and methodologically judicious work that they have performed.

Many blogs, however, degenerated into more deeply rooted ideological and partisan sectarianism, with no commitment to the facts.

What will be interesting to observe is the effect that the growing influence of the Internet will have on the way citizens relate to public institutions and among themselves in society.

There are still inconclusive studies which indicate a positive association between adverse attitudes toward the traditional news media and political polarization. In other words: people who have stopped believing in newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations tend to become more aggressive and radical in defense of their ideas and attack the ideas of their adversaries.

If these indications are confirmed, what type of political environment will survive?

To read

"Violence and Repression," by Percival de Sousa, Marcos Faerman and Fernando Portelo, Símbolo Publishing, 1978 (starting at 12 reals, or US $7.50 at sites with used books) - three major reporters write about cases of violence and show how they attract the interest of readers

"Violence in the Heart of the City," by Paulo Cesar Endo, FAPESP e Escuta Publishing, 2005 (starting at 37.15 reals) - an excellent psychoanalytical study about violence in the city of São Paulo

To see

"Capote," directed by Bennett Miller, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, 2005 (starting at 19.99 reals) - shows how Truman Capote made a hideous crime in remote Kansas interesting to thousands of readers in "The New Yorker" magazine and afterwards to millions with the book "In Cold Blood"

"Little Murders," directed by Alan Arkin, with Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland, 1971 - brilliant black comedy about how banalization of violence in big urban environments makes people indifferent to it

What the newspaper did right

Fans

In the series of São Paulo pubic opinion surveys, the newspaper decided that in the final edition, on Sept. 28, it will publish the percentage of fans for all the soccer teams (including Santos) in all regions of the city

Bolivian crisis

With two special reports, the coverage of problems in that neighboring country have been at a good level

... And where it was wrong

Satyagraha

A story on Wednesday used arguments by anonymous lawyers and jurists who cited the thesis and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States to raise the possibility of annulling Operation Satyagraha in Brazil

Paralympics

The newspaper underestimated in space and attention the importance of the event, which comes much closer to Olympic ideals than the official commercialized competition; readers lost many extraordinary stories

Topics most commented during the week

1. Municipal election
2. Paralympics
3. Telephone wiretaps

-Translation by John Wright