Vote, But Just Doesn't Say the Name

10/20/2014 - 11h33

Where does freedom of opinion end and partisan proselytizing begin? Folha loudly stomped all over the question this week with the resignation of sports columnist Xico Sá.

On Friday (Oct. 10), Xico filed a column in which he said he was voting for President Dilma Rousseff of the left-leaning Workers Party (PT).

The managing editor's office disapproved, pointing out that the space can't be used for this: he should change the text or publish it in the op-ed section on page 3.

He rejected the proposal and announced his resignation on social networks with posts in which he accused the "bourgeois press" of telling lies and investigating only one side.

He never accused the newspaper of censorship, but this was the version that was distributed, provoking indignation, and especially, misunderstanding of the newspaper's criteria.

"A few minutes of research will reveal dozens of columnists doing the same thing in their spaces daily. My God, Folha publishes Janio de Freitas and Reinaldo Azevedo every week!," wrote reader Marcel Davi de Melo, summarizing the tone of the protests.

It's a really difficult situation to understand. Any attentive reader is able to identify the preferences of columnists, which are obvious by the support they give certain candidates or the attacks on their adversaries. For the management of the newspaper, however, this does not fit into the concept of proselytizing.

"Criticism and praise of government programs, candidates and parties, such as the expression of political-ideological leanings of the columnist, are not included in the restriction, which focuses only on partisan proselytizing (making propaganda of a partisan nature) and voting declarations," explained the managing editor's office.

That's good, but to believe that the political environment allows discernment of one thing or the other is to flirt with unreality. Who really believes that systematically attacking or defending one party, as some columnists do, is not "making propaganda of a partisan nature?"

To worsen what is already confusing, the same Monday (Oct. 13) in which the news of his resignation was disseminated, the "elections" section published a piece in which Gregorio Duvivier declared his vote for the PT. "Some can and others can't?" asked readers.

In this case there was a lack of control, the newspaper admitted. Every column is reviewed by an editor or manager, and Duvivier escaped the filter. The lapse is a symptom that the subtlety of the criteria was not well understood even internally.

The managing editor's office said that the rule was established to prevent regular columns in the newspaper from transforming into a podium during election season.

"It was also instituted with the purpose of stimulating authors to establish an elevated dialogue with readers of all ideological and partisan positions, including those held by the majority of the public who reads Folha, which does not show political-partisan affinities."

Besides not avoiding the podium, that rule has expired given the expansion of columnists and the heated partisan polarization. It sounds ingenuous to believe that all the authors are interested in a dialogue with readers of all ideological stripes. Some of them are content to preach only to their own choir.

And it sounds contradictory that a newspaper is proud to put into practice the widest freedom of opinion and try to frame the full exercise of this freedom in the final chapter of the electoral saga. It's more or less an attempt to change the lock after the door was burgled.

*

Since Wednesday (Oct. 15), I have been searching for Xico Sá by telephone, email and a mutual friend. I wanted to hear his version and seek authorization to publish the suspended column on the website, so all readers could see it. There was no response.

Xico is a popular person, but I can't help but mention two attitudes that discomfort me in the episode surrounding his departure.

The first is his "hailstorm of posts of derision and slander on social networks," as he defined in a long note on Facebook, which revisits the same suspicions and discredits all journalists.

In his "spasm of ire," he described his colleagues as pusillanimous who are forced to tell lies to produce "rogue journalism."

The second was to write that he lied a lot when he was a reporter at Folha and the weekly news magazine "Veja" and that one day he will tell "everything I know" about the topics that major newspapers won't allow to be published.

Go ahead, Xico. Vague insinuations don't improve journalism, they worsen politics, and stain his biography.

Translated by JOHN WRIGHT

Read the article in the original language