Have You Read The Latest About Zé Dirceu?

07/22/2014 - 09h45

It's either a lack of topics to cover or the political news section has developed a psychoanalytical fixation for José Dirceu.

Since July 3, when he began to work in a friend's law office, the former Cabinet minister has been the object of at least 13 news items in the printed newspaper and website.

At the start it made sense. After months of legal battles to obtain the right to work outside of prison, the partial liberty for this member of the governing Workers Party (PT) and his return to circulation were news.

Coverage was extensive the first day, despite the weak itinerary of prison-office-prison: four stories (between print and online), with the right to view two videos.

The first, at an interminable 3 minutes and 17 seconds, followed him from the prison gates to the elevator doors at the company, getting a ride, the car being parked, the bureaucracy of showing identification at the entrance to the building.

The second one, lasting 1 minute and 56 minutes, showed the former Cabinet minister leaving through the door and taking the same route back. It was five minutes of noisy flashes without any dialogue.

Up to that point, it wasn't much, but, as the saying goes, it was news. The same could not be said about the material published or posted afterward.

Coverage of the routine of the main prisoners has rendered headlines which ranged from humorous to irrelevant: "Those convicted in the monthly allowance scandal leave for work; Dirceu watches game in jail" (July 5); "On second day at work, Dirceu arrives early and greets lawyer" (July 7); "Dirceu does not go to work on Tuesday and watches Brazil game in prison" (July 8); and "Dirceu takes admission test before going to work" (July 11).

"Please, stop persecuting José Dirceu. Let him live his life. Find something else to cover," wrote a reader from Porto Alegre.

I don't believe it is persecution to follow closely the way a convict's punishment is carried out. Dirceu and his favored companions are people with vast political connections, and it's not difficult, nor is it unprecedented, to bypass the judicial limits at times or that they enjoy preferential treatment.

It is the newspaper's role to pay attention to report, in case something happens. However, not everything can be covered or should be published; that's what the editing process is all about. As therapists say, it's time to leave behind a phase, move on and use the space for the most important news.

TEXTS AND SUBTEXTS

Folha published, in Thursday's editions (July 17), a story saying that Mônica Monteiro, the wife of Franklin Martins, a Cabinet minister during the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and one of the leaders in the re-election campaign of his successor, Dilma Rousseff, "saw huge increases in business with federal government offices" for her company between 2004 and 2014.

In summary, the story said that the profits of the Cine Group jumped from R$34,200 in 2004 to R$1.2 million in 2013 (US$540,000 at the current exchange rate).

It even asserted that, in 10 years, the company "took in" R$6 million for services provided to public entities, with or without competitive bidding.

Mônica wrote a long message (120 lines, against 49 in the story) in which she blasted the contents as "weak, superficial and tendentious" and believed that it led readers to conclude that there are illegalities or ethical infractions in this case.

In response, the Brasília bureau said that it only reported the increase in earnings and that it "made clear" that the government is not the company's main client.

That's partly true. The text was far from saying this clearly, and the subtext made the suggestion that Mônica could have benefited from her husband's influence in the government.

News reports and the arguments on both sides are way too extensive for this space. Check out the material in its entirety on the ombudsman's column on the website at folha.com/no1488195.

Translated by JOHN WRIGHT

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