The worst of all worlds seems to have materialized last Sunday (2). If you thought about the slim victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who couldn't do without the return game, it's good to remember that the column is about the media. Research institutes took a beating at the polls, and the explicit coup mongering of Bolsonarists has gained arguments for a new attempt to curtail democracy and freedom of expression and the press. This is what is at stake in the threats to the institutes made by the candidate Jair Bolsonaro, even in an electoral program, and by his allies. They wouldn't prosper in a serious country, but we've been far from that condition for a long time now.

Not that serious countries don't discuss polls, setbacks, and their consequences. The advent of social networks has accelerated voting mobility; the fake news, its volatility. It is an excellent discussion, to be treated with detachment and analysis, not with childish phrases, police-like acts, or incongruous and unconstitutional bills. That is, as long as there is a Supreme Court to verify this.

The noise against the surveys gained strength on September 7th, when polls replaced electronic ballot boxes as the main target of the subversive demonstration. This column discussed the fact and criticized the lack of emphasis given by Folha to the change in tactics. It even imagined that there could be a problem the day before if the results of the latest polls favored a tactical vote for Lula. The screenwriter of this mess called Brazil was more creative though, reversing the fate of the occasion suffrage and postponing the shooting to now.

Many readers wrote to the ombudsman and to the newspaper. If the explanation for the last-minute turn in Bolsonaro's favor is reasonable and Lula's numbers were within the margin of error, only with a lot of goodwill can one understand what happened in the state surveys. Many explanations have surfaced: an anti-PT defense move, sample parameters, persecution of surveyors, and promoted boycotts. If it were the liberal government, it would do what the free market always does: those who win customers are the ones who get it right, and whoever gets it wrong are the ones who lose it, as Laura Karpuska explained simply. The government, however, is authoritarian, as everyone already knows that. The novelty is that none of this has accounted for the frustration of those who projected a completely different result.

The numbers from Datafolha and Ipec, the two most respected institutes in the country and therefore targeted, did not make people believe that Lula would win. This is coup-mongering talk. They made many people imagine that the presidential contest would be looser and that the ballot boxes would be abundant in responses to Bolsonarism. The animal that came out of the ballot boxes was a very different one and it scared everybody.

Columnists have spent the past week debating, and some arguing, what happened. Between not recognizing or refusing to recognize the country we live in, the professional media, as a vehicle of knowledge, obviously has its share of the blame. The incompetence is not in the survey, but in the disconnection with its surroundings. Killing the messenger doesn't help us get rid of the message.

TRANSPARENCY

As Mauricio Stycer well described, this is the election of the surveys. There is no shortage of analysis and opinions, but there is a lack of reports. The huge amount of surveys and the current dynamics of journalism have led to a kind of footballization of electoral coverage. The news announcing the publishing of a new survey is the most read thing on Folha; O Globo goes "Live" on the site to break down the data; GloboNews gathers its commentators in a format reminiscent of football roundtables, which were never really round.

Nothing against the exhaustive analysis of the numbers, but they are not the ones who will tell what is happening in the country. Worse, they end up being overestimated when they should always be relativized since they only point out preferences, the so-called snapshot of the moment. If there is any error in the survey, it is in the management of its disclosure.

After the week of beatings, Folha changed its coverage of Datafolha. The headlines are more literal, the texts remind people that a survey is not a future result, the graphics denote the margins of error, and a providential "Understand" section explains the correct way to read surveys. We have to wait and see if transparency will stand up to the attempts to turn the tables.

INVISIBILITY

The week was full of public applause for the candidates in the runoff election. Folha gave wide visibility to Rodrigo Garcia's "unconditional support" for Bolsonaro, but not so much to the fact that a governor of São Paulo cannot be so subservient. On Lula's side, the most significant expression of vote came from Simone Tebet, with an important speech, full of messages. The newspaper managed not to print its image on the front page.

_{Translated by Cassy Dias}