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Examining the Bribery Scandal

05/20/2013 - 11h39

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SUZANA SINGER

A master's thesis submitted at São Paulo University at the end of last year poked its finger into a wound: was the press excessively harsh in its coverage of Lula's administration?

Responding to this question, journalist Eduardo Nunomura, 44, who has worked at Folha, "Estado de São Paulo," and at "Veja" and now devotes his life to academia, wallowed in the archives of newspapers and magazines.

He decided to study Folha and "Veja," two of the best-selling publications in the country, and, to have a parameter for comparison, surveyed two political scandals which occurred during Cardoso's administration.

He went back to 1998 to evaluate coverage of the "Cayman Dossier," the forged document which said leaders of Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) had accounts in that tax haven, and also the illegally recorded "BNDES wiretaps," which showed Cardoso and his ministers discussing the auction for telecommunications giant Telebrás, the biggest-ever privatization in Brazil.

Nunomura analyzed 703 entries (news reports, editorials, and informational graphics) about the "monthly allowance" bribery scandal and 215 about complaints into Cardoso's administration.

The quantitative difference is justified because the scandal in Lula's administration lasted much longer. In Folha, from June to December 2005, there were 72 headlines and 64 editorials about the "monthly allowance" scandal. In a single edition in June, there were two editorials about the scandal (one on the front page, another on page 2). Readers got a headline and an editorial practically every three days.

Complaints about Cardoso's administration lasted a shorter time, but were even more intense. In 35 days of coverage, there were 15 headlines and 10 editorials in Folha.

Did the Cardoso scandal end quickly due to a lack of effort by the press or were the complaints more robust in the "monthly allowance" scandal? Nunomura said that there are no elements to remove this doubt.

It's worthwhile to remember, however, that the so-called "Cayman Dossier," one of the subjects of the master's thesis, was revealed soon to be a fake document.

The journalist pointed to an "early complaint" in the coverage of scandals against Cardoso and Lula in Folha. He gives this label to the haste by the press to publish complaints at the first sign of suspicion, which almost always has bias and condemnation by the public.

In the "monthly allowance" scandal, Nunomura mentions as an example of the haste to condemn the fact that Folha mentioned impeachment of Lula even before the opposition did. In an editorial in August 2005, the newspaper said that the "hypothesis of impeachment, remote even a few days ago, now looks like a palpable possibility."

In the Cardoso scandal, when the case was starting to weaken, Folha resumed the investigation and published the wiretaps. On May 25, 1999, the headline was "Cardoso takes sides with one of the groups in Telebrás auction." In 12 pages, the newspaper carried the most compromising passages of the conversations under the label "Secrets of Power."

The conclusion of the study is that while "Veja" gave different treatment to the scandals in both administrations, Folha adopted a similar standard in both.

According to Nunomura, the magazine treated Cardoso as a victim of mistakes by his advisers and that his own intention was for the good of the country. With Lula, "Veja" started from the premise that he was involved in the scandal.

Folha was hard on Lula, but it was also tough on Cardoso. "Many media critics place the newspaper in open opposition to the PT (Workers Party) ... when it was critical, Folha opted for marketing logic to the detriment of eventual ideological preferences. As the popular saying goes, you won't kick a true friend when he's down," Nunomura writes.

He was surprised by the results of the survey. He imagined that it would be a massacre against Lula. "I even reviewed the data to be certain."

The master's thesis is welcome to refresh memories of those who believe that complaints against the government were born with the PT's ascent to power. At Folha, the predecessors to Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff were not treated with kid gloves. Besides Cardoso, I bet that José Sarney and Fernando Collor would agree.

Translated by JOHN WRIGHT

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