It was supposed to be a violent campaign. To leave no doubt about the matter, Roberto Jefferson decided to drop grenades and rifle shots at the Federal Police. There was supposed to be a coup, and the risk still lurks until further notice (after four years of turmoil, you can't trust a "whoever has the most votes wins" said after the final debate). There was also supposed to be a tsunami of fake news, and the country is drowning in it.

It was supposed to be the election where the professional press would be obliterated by social media. Not yet this time.

In a matter of days, Folha's coverage, which was having its ups and downs and considerable limitations, not unlike that of its main competitors, featured two stories that affected the most important electoral races of the runoff.

In the national dispute, a plan by Paulo Guedes ( Bolsonaro's Minister of Economy) to change the minimum wage and pensions after the elections torpedoed Jair Bolsonaro's campaign at a soft spot on its hull. At the state level, the account of one of Tarcísio de Freitas' security guards, who, in an unusual way, pressured a Jovem Pan cameraman to delete images captured during the shooting in Paraisópolis. In addition to the actual death of a person, there are now many questions to be elucidated.

The first article grew larger. Published in a protocol form by Folha on the day of the presidential poll, it was highlighted below its starting potential, but it turned into a stick against Jair Bolsonaro in the news, on social media, and in electoral propaganda. To the point of undermining the tiresome standard of customs. The article about Tarcísio's team was born big. Truculence of agents, destruction of evidence, and an embarrassing journalistic situation. It was one of the main subjects of the debate between candidates for governor in São Paulo, on Thursday (27), not to mention the avalanche of speculation.

Two stories exposing not only facts but the innards of Bolsonarism and its weaknesses. How much will they affect the voting this Sunday (30) is a whole other story. What matters is that they emerged from an ecosystem that at times seemed powerless in the face of a flood of deviant news, characteristic of electoral coverage; sometimes it was perceived as biased, notably after the First Page editorials, seen as anti-PT or comfortable with Bolsonarism. Someone will see a forced balance.

It is as if Folha had become a passenger of its own journalism, which is vigorously awakening in this final stretch of the elections, the most complicated one in decades. It is timely, as there is no indication that the commotion will end with the vote counting or even with the inauguration of whoever wins.

THOSE WHO VOTE

Folha has dozens of columnists, but few were those who did not declare a vote in this electoral race. Some even asked for support for a particular candidate; others used more than one column to defend and reiterate their preferences. Only one declined the practice and spent his weekly space explaining his reasons, Demetrius Magnoli. For him, declaring a vote is advertising "a product from the political market".

For those who have followed Folha for a longer time, this is certainly unprecedented. Never before in the history of this newspaper did we have so many people rowing in the same direction and with such conviction. At least not in comparable periods, after re-democratization. Bolsonaro's role in it is obvious. The body of work of the current president is too heavy, making the task of keeping the opinion within the four lines of journalistic balance complex. Persisting on the football metaphor, the thing is more like a ball in the bush because the game is a championship game.

Some readers complain, but not many. One of them nudges and questions whether Folha will not give the president the right to respond, as the TSE ( Supreme Electoral Court) did with Jovem Pan in relation to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Others ask Sports and Food columnists, for example, to stick to their main topics.

The Editorial Manual provides for some sobriety by stating that "columns and blogs are not an appropriate space to convey personal interests, commercial reports, party propaganda or electoral campaigns" (pp. 89 and 90).

When asked about the movement, the Editorial Board commented: " The Opinion columns in Folha should privilege the sustained discussion of ideas. This noble goal is undermined, and the debate, impoverished, when incumbents deviate from this path, sometimes repeatedly, to address idiosyncrasies as their electoral preference."

Curiously, at this point, too, the newspaper seems fleeting. This time, from the set of opinions that it saw fit to gather in the name of the plurality it has always advocated. And the team paddles to indicate that the moment our country is currently going through is absolutely exceptional.

_{Translated by Cassy Dias}