21/06/2009

With education, it's essential to dig deep

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

The mere increase in space for education is little; what's really important is the quality of coverage

Over 42 days, between May 4 and last Monday, Folha had four main headlines about topics pertaining to education. It is not that common in Brazilian newspapers, including this one, to give so much attention to topics that are not economic, political or international.

It is my opinion, and that of many readers, that this practice of relegating social issues to the back burner is one of the worst vices in journalism.

During the 14 months in which I have held this position, I expressed numerous times the desires of the public that education return to a priority for Folha as it was during the 1970s and 1980s.

It seems that the newsroom is responding to these appeals.

In 2008 through June 17, 72 stories about education appeared on the front page; during the same period in 2009, there were 90. Many dealt with problems in the public education system, such as textbooks with errors or inadequate content for the age level of students and the excessive number of temporary teachers.

Others involve projects or national realities, such as the college entrance exam, the good academic results of scholarship winners, the census of education and the high dropout rate by students in home study courses. I asked the newsroom if there was an order to give priority to educational topics. The answer was: this is an editorial priority this year for being "a topic which combines obvious national importance and an immediate interest for readers" and because surveys "normally show it to be one of the top items pointed out by subscribers."

It's great that the newspaper is acquiescing to the expressed desires of its audience. This doesn't always happen, but the mere increase in space and emphasis for education is little. The newsroom informed me that it is "under discussion" to create a section or page for education, as it did last year for health. That is another good possibility, but it is still insufficient.

The health page was welcome, but frequently treated as "personal health" (which can slip into the superfluous) rather than public policy, which has much greater interest for society.

I hope that an education section does not follow this model. But what is really important is the quality of coverage. For two weeks São Paulo University has been engulfed by a serious crisis, and the newspaper's work at dealing with it has been weak in my opinion.

While two of the demands of strikers (salary increase and not offering core courses by remote learning) have been the object of reporting this week, the result was superficial in both cases. As it did in 2008 during the strike by teachers in São Paulo, the newspaper did not delve deeply into the problems that motivated the action at São Paulo University. And going in-depth is essential when the topic is education.

Too critical for little reason

On Monday, a teaser on the front page of the newspaper was about the program "Light for Everyone," by the federal government, which wants to provide electricity to 3 million domiciles by the end of 2010.

According to the report, it called for 1.8 million families by 2008 and would assist another 1.1 million this year and next year. That would only leave 168,000 houses, a little more than 5% of the total.

The headline on the teaser and the headline on page A4 showed how it falls short of the target, but this does not represent the relatively small percentage.

Highlighting how far it has fallen short of the goal, without telling that things could change by 2010 and that 168,000 families could be included, leads to the conclusion that it tried to be too critical for too little reason.

On Thursday a letter in Letters to the Editor by Cláudio Sales, of the Ascend Brazil Institute, questions the program with more powerful data which are not contained in the story: it predicted resources only for the installation of the energy distribution networks to cover the costs of maintaining and operating the new installations.

Besides this, "90% of the resources (of the program) come from consumers' electric bills, and the remaining 10% come from state governments."

To read

"Media and Education," by Roseli Araújo Batista, Thesaurus Publishing, 2007 (25 reals, or US $12.40)

To see

"Between the School Walls," by Larent Cantet, from 2008, on exhibit in São Paulo

What Folha did right...

Iranian elections

With a special correspondent risking safety, the newspaper had topical, precise coverage of the important Iranian presidential election

... and where it did badly

Serra and Lula

On Tuesday, front-page news reported that the federal government authorized São Paulo state to raise its debt ceiling; no analysis explains the political significance of this action, which benefits the main aspirant for the 2010 presidential election (São Paulo Gov. José Serra)

Gisele Bündchen

"The dream of every woman is to have children" said the headline on the page with the umpteenth interview with Gisele Bundchen by this newspaper, published Thursday; this and other platitudes the model said, along with the information that she opened the door herself for the interview

Lula and Borat

The mention of the character Borat was dispensable in the photo caption on Thursday's front page under a photo that shows President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in an outfit typical of Kazakhstan

Worth remembering

Cases that need to be looked at again

Police Investigation

How are the investigations by the Federal Police into businessman Fernando Sarney, which has not appeared in the news in Folha since February, after first coming out in October 2008?

-Translation by John Wright