Both There and Here, Tracking the Words

08/23/2017 - 13h10

The violent confrontation between racist and antiracist groups in a small city in the south of the United States has turned into a worldwide debate ever since last weekend. It seems to have been a localized explosion of tension with the potential to spread around the world.

The best newspapers and analysts in the North American press have been concentrating on the enabling role of President Donald Trump as it relates to the radical environment that this conflict started in. The responsibility and influence of the media in this scenario is also under question.

The Republican is being criticized, even by members of his own party, for treating as equals the so-called "white supremacists" with those who protested against them. For Trump, there were "very good people" on both sides.

Specifically related to the field of Brazilian journalism, I have two comments to make. The first relates to the term "supremacist" and the second regarding stimulation of a prejudiced and racist environment.

The first mention in Folha of the word "supremacist" - at least as far as I was able to discover - was on the 5th of July in 1965, in a column published in the culture section. The New York correspondent Wilson Velloso was reporting on the emigration of families from the state of Virginia to South Africa.

This was the only time that the newspaper published a mention of supremacists in the 1960's, which were marked by the fight for civil rights in the United States.

The mentions began to multiply in the years after 2000, especially after the terrorist attack of September 11th. It shows up in a full-page report, from the 15th of June 2014, about the growth of hate groups in the United States since 2000 that have expanded their targets beyond blacks.

Between 2014 and 2015, the world "supremacists" was cited more times that it had been cited in all of the 60 years previously. It arrived on the front page of the newspaper on the 13th of November 2016, among explanations for the victory of Donald Trump: "White supremacists celebrate the election and expect to have influence". Since then, the term has spread throughout Folha, being mentioned more than 30 times in less than a year.

I agree with columnist Janio de Freitas, who, on the 17th of August, argued that the use of the word "supremacists" results in the attenuation of appearances. Freitas reasoned that there is no reason to cover up racism, as a subterfuge that only serves the interest of the racists. "Supremacists" is an anti-journalistic word due to its imprecision, by the way that it is utilized as a mask and because of its hypocrisy."

In light of what the columnist wrote, Folha has considered as more appropriate, especially for the understanding of the Brazilian public, adopting as a matter of priority vocabulary derived from the word "racism".

OVEREXPOSURE & EQUIVALENCY

Part of the North American press has pointed to a recent and grave error committed by communication vehicles in adopting a "false equivalency" during the presidential campaign of 2016. Others have questioned the excess of exposure that has been given to ultranationalists.

Margaret Sullivan, media critic of the "Washington Post", declares that "the national news media's misguided sense of fairness helped equate the serious flaws of Hillary Clinton with the disqualifying evils of Donald Trump".

A study by Harvard University concluded that media coverage was full of false equivalencies during the election.

Issie lapowsky wrote in "Wired" that the press lives with the dilemma of having to choose between ignoring radical groups, allowing the potential public threat to go undenounced, or shining a lot of light on them, and running the risk of increasing their followers.

The aggression against a Syrian street vendor in Rio de Janeiro, the discussion on social media regarding Nazism from the right or the left, or racial attacks at soccer games are all recent proof that the country is being affected by growing intolerance. And that in the counterpoint of overexposure, there is little coverage of signs of intolerance, like the typical attacks against the country's Umbanda and Candomblé religious centers.

In the 2018 presidential election, confronting the question of false equivalency will be decisive to the quality of coverage. Until now, the only pre-candidate who has shown himself favorable towards Donald Trump is Jair Bolsonaro (PSC-RJ Party).

Seen as a potentially presidential candidate who is growing in polls of voter preference, the federal congressman is a defender of militarism, of expanding the use of firearms by citizens in a country with a record number of homicides and of chemical castration for rapists, in addition to having made dozens of recorded homophobic, racist and sexist declarations.

How can his candidacy be covered in an impartial and fair way without being especially and honestly blunt? Isn't the exposure being given to the candidate and his supporters already over exaggerated?

Journalists need to be the destroyers of what has been called "post-truth" and fake news. They can't be naïve nor uncritically reproduce declarations and narratives, without profound investigations and correlation with historical data and facts. Journalism has to be impartial, precise and honestly blunt, as the absurd times we live in demand.

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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