"It's impossible to escape without help." "It only has one button and is controlled by a video game controller." "It has 'about 40 hours' of oxygen." "Banging sounds are heard." "Oxygen will last longer than you think." "The pilot's wife is a descendant of a couple killed on the Titanic." "Estimated oxygen supply finishes." "Doctor explains chances of survival as oxygen decreases." "Catastrophic implosion." All of this came out in Folha's headlines, a summary of the collective trance that overtook us in the last week.
"Brain doesn't assimilate an implosion", says the statement from Deutsche Welle, but it is able to keep up, at a soap opera pace, with the misfortune of billionaires who were chasing the rhinoceros head of our times: the exclusive experience, recorded not as a trophy on the wall, but on cell phone screens.
The days were full of explanations about how we couldn't resist events of this kind. Folha's analysis gave credit to the great provocative object of the adventure, the Titanic. Hard to disagree, especially after learning that the song from the film's original soundtrack, sung by Céline Dion, was played over 500,000 times, just on Spotify and only on Thursday (22).
The newspaper's text commented on the "moralistic bias" that prevailed in the discussion around the media interest in the case, infinitely greater than what was perceived in the face of the daily misfortune of shipwrecked immigrants in the Mediterranean. A week earlier, as is known, a vessel that left Libya with 750 people, mostly Pakistanis, sank after allegedly refusing an offer of help from a Greek coastal patrol.
Folha's index busts the question wide open. Until Friday (23), the Mediterranean episode had been contemplated by three articles in the newspaper. In fewer days, the Atlantic chapter provoked the editing of more than 30 pieces and counting. It is a simplistic comparison, of course, they are completely different events. "As the saying goes, one death is a tragedy, one million is statistics", wrote a columnist for the English newspaper The Guardian, to remember shortly after the approximately 500 people still missing, including 100 children, who would be under the deck of the fishing boat. One hundred children, she repeats in the article.
It is not a problem for journalism to get excited about certain subjects. This is because readers are just as excited. It doesn't matter if the bastards are billionaires, miners from Chile, submariners from Argentina, or kids from Thailand. Facts transcend journalistic intent. The problem is that there is no journalistic intention at times when the news needs to be imposed on the public when it is necessary to reiterate the read, see this, it is important.
The hard truth is, we wouldn't be remembering the one hundred Children if it weren't for the five lost souls of the Titan.
GOOGLE IT
Submarine or submersible? In the middle of the soap opera, Folha answered: submersible. The newspaper spoke with a professor from USP, who provided readers with the knowledge and fun facts about naval engineering.
The instruction, however, did not even make it to the next headline of the coverage, which since then insists on using the word submarine in virtually all headlines. It is what determines the uncompromising search engine. It's up to the lexicon to get it together.
DROWNING IN NUMBERS
In August 2000, in another saga followed in detail by the world media and most of the planet, the atomic submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. Russian authorities were slow to recognize the accident and accept help from other countries in the rescue, fearful of compromising military secrets, which only amplified the drama.
Having revealed its location, a banal finding: parked on the seabed, at a depth of 108 meters, the hull, 154 meters long, would have come out of the water if it had an elevated extremity. It was not complete, the maneuver was impracticable, and everything was just an exercise in possibilities to illustrate dimensions and circumstances.
On Friday (23), Folha carried out a new exercise of possibilities. It weighed the cost of the detailed scale model of a planned neighborhood in São Paulo at the price of luxury cars: R$4 million, enough to buy a Ferrari and a BMW. The comparison was in line with the article, which listed the attractions of the large development in the south zone, the site of a real estate boom.
On the newspaper's website, the image of the installation divided the section of photographs with a very different construction scene: the controversial 15 square meter houses built in Campinas to house families from an occupation. Folha missed the opportunity to carry out another exercise of possibilities. Only within the area occupied by the model, 170 square meters, one could fit 11 of these houses. Dimensions and circumstances help journalism.
Jose Henrique Mariante
An engineer and journalist, he was a reporter, correspondent, editor, and secretary at Folha, where he has worked since 1991. He is the ombudsman
Translated by Cassy Dias