The reporter at the next desk was already bigger than the position. It happens a lot in newsrooms, where career plans are at most a simple agenda, never a reality. The newbie's perception was serenely confirmed in the following years, during live coverage and special reports. The guy would later become a writer, but on that day, he naturally apologized to the interviewee, with whom he spoke on the phone when asking his age. "It's a Folha thing", he explained to the character in his story, but also to the newbie that watched the scene with curiosity.

It's indeed a thing of the newspaper. It's in Folha's Style Guide (page 228): "The standard is to inform the age (not the date of birth) of the main characters in the news, especially in case of an interview, or death and illness…". "If it is not relevant from a journalistic point of view, it can be optional to omit the age when the character so prefers", the entry ponders.

Glória Maria never mentioned her age because, as a good journalist, she knew that her peers would never respect her preference for secrecy. As Zeca Camargo once wrote, a secret that she "enjoyed keeping and enjoyed confusing anyone who tried to uncover it". Obituaries in the main vehicles were elegant in circumventing the subject or, in the face of the inexorable journalistic obligation to inform, treating it with due reverence.

Shortly after announcing Glória's death on Thursday morning (2), Folha mishandled the topic, in a gossip tone ("she did everything to hide her age"), attributing to her a number already in the subheading of a note on the fact. The dilemma is not to inform or not to inform something, but how to inform it. Competitors, in equivalent articles, proved that it was not such a complicated task.

Reducing Gloria's open secret to a whim is the easy way out. It would be more interesting and fun to show how she managed to do this by circumventing her own longevity. Glória did not age on TV, she kept reinventing herself over time and according to each new role. The street reporter of the 1970s was the Gloria of one generation, while the host of Fantástico ( Globo TV's Sunday variety show), three decades later, was the Gloria of a whole other audience. There were several Glórias and, for that very reason, "nobody will be able to do the math", she said

Coincidence or not, Folha had already slipped a few days earlier when writing about women and their ages. Several readers complained about the headline "Backstreet Boys throw underpants to thirty-something women in a nostalgic show in SP". The lead of the article on the 90's boyband live performance expanded the universe of both description and complaints: "A crowd of thirty-something and forty-something women crowded the Allianz Parque venue, in São Paulo, on Friday night. They were there to relive their teenage years and sing all the Backstreet Boys hits at the top of their lungs…".

If the goal was to be witty or funny, it didn't work. "Why can't women age and still enjoy things? Why is it that any woman can be labeled too old?" asked one reader. Another wrote that, like her, many at the stadium did not have the chance to go to an equivalent concert during their poor teenage years, an economic condition overcome in spite of the misogyny of the country that she sees reflected in the text. "An article with a derogatory and outdated expression used to designate women and label them based on their age", summarized a third.

It does sound really out of fashion, but not so much in Folha. A search on the newspaper's website shows several recent occurrences of the term "thirty-something women" and also "thirty-something men", including in concert reviews. Surely someone will notice a sense of ageism or even a market reality since it seems more profitable to bring to the country bands that appeal to those who can afford more expensive tickets. Inevitable, however, is to verify the cliché. So much worse when understood as something offensive, as well as cliché.

IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

Yanomamis believe that the image of a person captured by a camera is an integral part of the one portrayed. According to an article published by Folha on Friday (3), this is a belief even more justified than the mercantile image rights created by non-indigenous people. Members who die only rest after a long and complex funeral ritual, where all traces of the deceased are erased. Including their images.

The Sumaúma website, which blew the whistle on the group's dire situation, reported that they negotiated with Yanomami leaders to publish photographs that denounced the severe malnutrition of their children. The exception was opened based on the understanding that it was necessary to show the country and the world the seriousness of the situation. By Yanomami logic, taking a picture of a sick person is like taking a piece of this person, weakening him or her even more.

The question that remains is whether the mainstream media, currently present in Roraima, has taken the ritualism of the suffering characters also into account.

_{Translated by Cassy Dias}