Ombudsman Position Completes 27 Years, Surmounting Crises and Discussing Formats

09/26/2016 - 12h16

27 years ago, the front page on September the 24th announced: "Ombudsman brings Folha's mistakes to its readers". This was the first column by Caio Túlio Costa, the first ombudsman in the Brazilian press.

What has changed since then in Folha and in journalism? I put this question to my predecessors. The following is a summary of their responses. I have included their complete ponderations on the site.

"Everything has changed", replied Caio Túlio Costa very directly. "Today, two of the biggest media companies on the planet (Google and Facebook) don't produce a single line of content. Even worse, newspapers haven't been able to adapt to the disruption that the medium has suffered since the internet came into existence and worsened with social networks.

As Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva wrote, the business of journalism has undergone structural changes. "The result has been a loss of quality provoked by the incapability of management to find profitable formulas for sustaining standards of excellence. The typical response to these difficulties has been to cut personnel and content. Folha hasn't escaped from this process."

Marcelo Leite pointed to a dangerous movement: "In a time when social networks amplify ideological polarization, journalistic analysis and interpretation, which should serve to knock down edifications of certainty, have migrated their coverage, today consisting mostly of simple reporting, to opinion columns and special editions." He also identified "structural incentives for poor investigation and editing: low salaries, precarious employment, overwork, low morale provoked by waves of firings."

Mario Vitor Santos lamented the abandoning of a non-biased posture. "This is revealed as much in the reporting as in the editing, in exchange for support of the overthrow, politically motivated, of an elected president against whom there exists no criminal charge, now followed by support for this government that came about through a coup."

For Mário Magalhães, ombudsman from 2007 to 2008, a significant part of Brazilian journalism has lost its identity and transformed itself into propaganda. "It has reverted to the unthinking partisanship of the 1950s, critical of some and condescending towards others. Opinion suffocates information. Many times, what by format is reporting by content is really editorial. True journalism is lost and the citizens lose even more."

What can the newspaper offer today that justifies its cost and existence? This is the question raised by Bernardo Ajzenberg, for whom the current model is obsolete. "Unprecedented investigation and verification, following trends, deepening of themes - greater and lesser - from daily life, a balanced contribution for political, economic and cultural debate, offering differentiated and special services. Why not radicalize in this direction?".

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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