"Ferocious Mass of Deformed Information"

04/14/2014 - 16h14

Not accustomed to interviews, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met with nine bloggers sympathetic to the government, at the institute that bears his name in São Paulo, and spoke for three hours and 28 minutes last Tuesday.

Lula hit hard at the big news organizations. When asked why Brazilians have a negative view of the government, he fired back: "We are being driven by a ferocious mass of deformed information which creates an imaginary place and makes up people's minds for them."

The ex-president asserted that the press should be "a little more serious and more neutral," that "the correct news is on the Internet," and made a connection between the protests in June of last year and what he called the lack of information by young people. "There are days that I think the country is finished."

He recommended that the government respond to all its critics, refute incorrect information and spend more time on the state-owned broadcasting network.

The Workers Party (PT) member defended the communications regulation bill but made sure to point out that he opposes censorship. "The reader is the censor in this country. He will censor what he wants, not the government."

Lula praised those in attendance and said that they are criticized by the "mainstream" press because "they want you to dump on me in this interview all the hate that they spill out." That was a reference to a 2010 interview also given to bloggers.

As an example of this hate, he cited an interview on the TV show "Fantástico" on the first day of 2006, when the "monthly allowance" scandal was hot. "Do you remember the aggressiveness by Bial when he went to interview me at the (presidential) palace? I could have gotten up and said 'Get out of my office!' No. I said 'I will show this citizen the education what you don't learn in school, what people learn in the crib.'"

In reality, Pedro Bial comported himself in an exemplary fashion, as an independent journalist: he asked the most fundamental, uncomfortable questions, let the interviewee speak and refuted as he saw necessary (http://goo.gl/5ulD6j).

By the same logic, the ex-president must not have liked Folha's headline on Wednesday: "Lula demands action by Dilma to improve economy" (referring to his successor, Dilma Rousseff). The newspaper was right to highlight the part in which he said that Dilma will have to explain, during the electoral campaign, how she will turn around the Brazilian economy. "We could do better," he admitted.

The subtle criticism was most notable in the remarks by the ex-president, since pressure to shake up the economy is getting stronger. Neither competing newspapers nor bloggers gave the necessary amount of importance to this passage.

The newspaper erred, however, in reporting that the ex-president summoned the PT to try to prevent a congressional investigation into allegations of corruption at state-run oil company Petrobras. Lula didn't say this. "If Petrobras needs to be investigated, let's go ahead. And what is the decisive factor? To get it done. The people never wanted a congressional investigation for anything and now in this aspect, PT must rise to the occasion."

Folha did not recognize the error. "The context made it clear what he wanted to say in his speech full of ellipses. The note by the press secretary is only an attempt to confuse things by proposing an interpretation incompatible with the rest of the statement," said the editors at the political section.

It makes no sense to infer what the person interviewed meant to say. The newspaper should have corrected the information, as it is accustomed to doing.

The right way to respond to those who accuse the press of bias is to provide the best journalism: discover where the news is, publish the different versions of the same fact, be critical in showing the progress of the country and not hesitate when it is time to correct errors.

Translated by JOHN WRIGHT

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