The Temptation Behind the Dossiers

01/16/2017 - 13h07

Last week was marked by the escalation of conflicts between the President elect of the United States, Donald Trump, and journalistic organizations.

The CNN television network and the BuzzFeed internet site divulged the existence of a 35-page dossier with unproven information against Trump. In response, the Republican accused the media of being unethical and biased.

It's an intricate case, but here's the rub: how should the media react to unconfirmed information.

Last year still during the internal Republican party primaries, a political research firm contracted by Donald Trump's adversaries hired a former British spy to investigate possible ties between Trump and Russia.

The memorandums that the spy produced detail that the Kremlin tried to obtain influence over Trump, preparing to blackmail him with alleged sex videos and bribe him with advantageous business deals.

The news about the dossier was revealed by CNN on Tuesday (the 10th). Immediately afterwards, BuzzFeed published the entire document, advising readers that the information hadn't been verified.

The Folha adopted a restrained and appropriate approach. It took advantage of and utilized the "New York Times" service that it has the rights to. In two major articles, the American newspaper covered the news for its readers without resorting to sensationalism.

Dossiers as campaign weapons are nothing new in politics. Brazil has had many examples.

In 1937 General Olympio Mourão Filho authored the Plano Cohen (Cohen Plan), a dossier attributed to communists in the country, that told of a hypothetical communist takeover of Brazil. Treated as authentic by the Brazilian government, the document which was nothing more than a fraud, served as justification for a coup d'etat, in which Getúlio Vargas installed the Estado Novo (New State).

In 1998 the so-called Cayman dossier showed up, which the Folha at the time referred to as "a collection of photocopies without verified authenticity" that suggested an association between a company in the Bahamas and the president-at-the-time Fernando Henrique Cardoso and ministers José Serra and Sérgio Motta and governor Mário Covas.

It received extensive coverage in the Brazilian press. Only three years later was the key component of the dossier, a bank statement of US$ 352.971 million from Schroders Bank in Switzerland for a company called CH, J & T, proven to be false. The company, did in fact exist, but didn't belong to the PSDB leaders and the bank statement was later assumed to have been forged.

On September 15, 2006, two weeks before the first electoral rounds, members of the PT (Workers' Party) were arrested by the Federal Police in a hotel in São Paulo while trying to purchase a dossier against the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) candidate for governor of São Paulo, José Serra.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in an attempt to minimize the importance of the episode, declared that the operation was the work of a "bunch of madmen".

The point here isn't to analyze the role of the Brazilian press in each of the cases but to question something else.

There is no dossier, report or investigation that contains nothing but absolute truth. Reporting on proven facts is the reason that newspapers exist.

They cannot abdicate their role as independent investigators, verifying information, applying techniques to format the narrative with analysis and contextualization.

Dossiers which originate undercover, investigations from the police and Public Prosecutors, or information collected in the shadow of power are news in a raw state that should be passed through a technical sieve.

We can't, however, ignore that we are living in different times, in which news - both false and true - circulates without control. Obviously, there is no easy solution.

I tend to believe that a newspaper's credibility is enhanced when it reports on the existence of a dossier, without entering into details about its content until the authenticity has been proven.

What purpose does it serve to publish information on one day - which may have damaging consequences - to subsequently have to admit that it was false on the next? This is what the social networks already do.

In the Trump episode, the novice site BuzzFeed took it upon itself to divulge such a report in its entirety while alleging that it was up to its readers to make up their own minds.

But readers don't have the expertise nor the tools necessary for such investigation and verification. That's why they choose to pay for information that is collected, edited and drafted by specialized organizations.

This is the essence of journalism, which BuzzFeed chose to ignore.

Translated by LLOYD HARDER
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