Facing Crime with Backs Turned to the Slums

07/10/2017 - 09h44

Targeted. That is how millions of residents of Brazilian favelas (slums) feel, characters in the daily news involving drugs, violence, poverty and misery. Targeted by police and targeted by the press, who insist upon maintaining a practically indissoluble link between the terms favela and crime.

"Targeted" is the term that was on the front page of Folha on the 4th of July, below an aerial photo of a favela with the following subtitle: "Project from the Mayor, João Doria, plans to finish with the Moinho favela, considered by police to be the drug supplier for the crackland 1 km away; residents will be taken to another location.

The title of the story inside confirmed it: "Doria wants to remove the favela that is the source of drugs for São Paulo crackland". The text started out like this: "São Paulo City Hall plans to remove the families that live in the Moinho favela, considered by police to be the primary supplier of drugs for the crackland in the center of São Paulo. The project has become one the priorities of João Doria's (PSDB Party) administration. The objective is to stifle the flow for users located within a 1 km circle".

The generalization is imprecise and criminalizes all of the residents. Reader Margarida Gorecki summed up the problem proficiently: "Starting with the title - it begins with the confirmation by the police that the favela is such a 'source of drugs", which passes along the idea of responsibility for the area to its inhabitants, and not to a complex drug trafficking chain.

In the article, it says only that the favela is 'considered by the police' to be the source of drugs, without explaining exactly how this conclusion was reached. It conveys the idea that the community is responsible and that if it is relocated, even to an area located close by, the problem will be eliminated. The PCC trafficking/criminal faction wasn't mentioned".

I have little to add. The favela may house traffickers, and may contain areas where drugs and weapons are hidden, but the community is not the supplier of the drugs.

The editor of the Cities sub-section, Eduardo Scolese, defends the editorial choice. "The affirmation in the report is based upon police and journalistic investigations. The movement of drugs from the favela and into the crackland is well known to the Civil and Military Police and to reporters who follow the day-to-day scenario in the crackland and this community. We are talking about the locale itself, and not the residents in general."

The editor's response doesn't hide that the report suffers from the same ill of limiting itself exclusively to official sources - in this case, the Military Police, Civil Police, City Hall and public authorities charged with driver's licences and traffic operations.

It is clear that one of the ways to avoid - or diminish - the criminalization of the slums in the news is to diversity the sources used in reporting. Hearing more frequently from residents themselves would help to break the stigma that favelas are just places full of fear, controlled by criminal factions.

In this specific case, Folha showed a lack of appetite for creating a more pluralistic and less prejudiced narrative. If for nothing more than accuracy, journalists need to make a clear distinction between the working people that live in favelas - recognized as being in the majority - and groups with criminal tendencies.

Throughout its history, Folha has shown sensitivity to this theme. In 2007, after Rio Governor Sérgio Cabral Filho (PMDB Party) referred to the Rocinha favela as a "factory for producing marginal characters", the newspaper published an editorial in which it defined the episode as a "lamentable insult" and warned against the unfortunate automatic correlation between favelas and crime made by the Governor.

The text declared: "Such a correlation, it should be noted, is symptomatic of the thinking of a considerable portion of the population". It continued: "From planned actions for 'urban clean-up', which envision sweeping homeless from the streets, to barbaric attacks by youth who set fire to the indigent during the night, signs of a dangerous ghost seem to have arisen in Brazilian society: the summary elimination of all contingents who, whether drowning in misery or sunken in crime, attest to the historical failure of public security and policies of social inclusion undertaken in the country".

The local news section slipped up on a cause that the newspaper has historically embraced. As Jailson de Souza e Silva, from the Favela Observatory warns "the media contributes more than any other institution to the consolidation and diffusion of stereotypes". Folha needs to be aware of, and to challenge prejudices and stimulate changes to the convenient way of seeing things.

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

Read the article in the original language