31/05/2009

Dengue and Yellow Fever in the Media

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

A new study points out the lack of dialogue among the government, academia and press in the coverage of at-risk situations

The News Agency for the Rights of Children (Andi) will release in Brasília tomorrow its most recent study about the behavior of Brazilian news media in the coverage of at-risk situations.

It is about the book indicated at the bottom of this text, up to now only available electronically, about the cases of Dengue and Yellow Fever in Brazil in 2008.

The importance of this type of work is fundamental to understand exactly what journalism does.

When society seems to be entering the "post-factual" era, in which only opinions exist, independent of reality, the existence of anchors of objectivity, with the systematic compilation of verifiable data according to recognized methods, becomes essential for citizens to reach confident conclusions about what is going on around them.

That's what this book does. The survey shows how six print newspapers (among them Folha) and four news programs on nationwide TV networks covered the occurrence of Yellow Fever in the remote west-central region and Dengue in Rio de Janeiro in the first four months of 2008. After establishing the consensual importance of the media in these situations to demonstrate the necessity of establishing a "triangle of confidence" (among the government, academia and news media), the text shows how there were problems, especially in the case of Yellow Fever, in the lack of dialogue among these three fundamental actors.

The book shows intense attacks made against the behavior of the press in the case of Yellow Fever, but it concluded that "while it identified important mistakes in this coverage, the numbers do not corroborate integrally the negative criticism left out of the news relative to the two illnesses."

For example, "contrary to the perception of some of those interviewed for the current study, the numbers reveal a certain precaution by news organizations in labeling the occurrence of Yellow Fever as an epidemic. While 53.7% of the stories published in newspapers which were analyzed Dengue is treated clearly as an epidemic, while when Yellow Fever was the focus the incidence was less than 14%."

Analysis of the material published by the newspapers shows that 70% of the stories about Yellow Fever use a member of one of the three areas of executive branch power as a source. In other words, no more than 30% of the material surveyed has all the other possible actors as a main source.

The biggest deficiency detected in coverage was that it rejected viewpoints about preventing the crises in 2007, with information about the proximity of a possible new outbreak of Dengue and similar situations in the future, ignored basic health policies, the Family Health Program (Health PAC) and the budget discussions.

Never before in history...

It is a journalistic obligation to devote much more attention to current events than those long in the past.

It is only natural, therefore, that those who are in power get more scrutiny from the news media than do their predecessors.

But the historic perspective almost always puts the current in more appropriate context.

Two examples help to develop the argument. On Tuesday, a story reported that one of five vital positions in the federal public administration is occupied by a member of the governing Workers Party (PT).

Wouldn't it be interesting to know the percentage of jobs held by members of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in the middle of the seventh year of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidential administration?

On Thursday, another story showed that the PT received 55% of the campaign donations made by companies tied to Petrobras in the elections of 2006 and 2008. Wouldn't it be useful to know which parties received the most contributions from companies in 1998 and 2000?

To read

"An Analysis of Editorial Treatment Dedicated by the Brazilian Press Toward Dengue and Yellow Fever," by Andi (free download at www.andi.org.br)

To see

"The Epidemic," by Olivier Langlois, with Richard Bohringer and Martins Forsstrom (starting at 12.90 reals, or US $6.60)

Translation by John Wright