“Internet user captures the moment: Someone jumps from building in flames.” Source: UOL. Problem: This is the cheapest Paraguayan Photoshop job possible, recognizable as such with the naked eye. UOL ran it as gospel truth on the front page of its portal for hours before recognizing and regretting the error.
“If we continue down the current path, more and more of the news will consist of regurgitated press releases and wire copy,” Torves concludes.
Not to mention uncorroborated leaks from anonymous sources, which is just a variation on the same one-note samba.
This week, for example, Veja magazine creates a horrendous scandal over an alleged bribery scheme at the Rio de Janeiro state independent audit tribunal, the TCE-RJ.
Its source: the proverbial Brazilian “leaky police,” whose cavalier handling of information developed by Swiss authorities in the Alstom case has reportedly led the latter to stop sharing information with Brazilian officials. See
The Veja story is in my translation queue — I try to keep track of the “failed prognostication ratio” of various local news organizations as an aid to spending my content budget wisely — but what is immediately notable is that it is based entirely on leaked documents from a police investigation, and lacks any account of how the leaked material came into the magazine’s hands, or from whom.
Compare a similar story by CartaCapital this week, using information from a federal police investigation in Rondônia.
The accusations presented cite the full name, profession and residence of the witness in the case and the full name of the federal police officer she gave the statement to. See
The sourcing of the Veja story is handled in precisely the opposite way.
The absence of anonymous sourcing tends to correlate significantly with credibility, I tend to find. Over-reliance on it tends to correlate with the opposite of credibility. It is not a hard and fast rule, but a notable statistical trend, I think.
I can only find two sourcing statements in the entire Veja exposé, both on the order of “police say” or “police suspect.”
That is to say, some member or other of the leaky police force says so, not the police as an institution or an authorized spokesperson.
The Brazilian federal police have taken a very firm position on the semantics of that sort of sourcing recently, insisting that leakers not authorized to speak to the press will be hunted down and ruthlessly scalped of their pensions. No news that this has occurred yet, however.
The charges against the Rio audit board could be true or not, of course — there are well documented cases of such things taking place here, but there are also cases of honest public servants being lynched in the pages of the yellow press — or possibly dishonest onesbeing auto-da-fe’d for acts of dishonesty the did not actually commit. See, for example,
In any event, we should also recall that nothing has ever come of a similar, more recent Veja scandal story — bribery of the elections tribunal of the federal district! — and that the magazine seems to have never followed up on the story. See
I never read about any outcome in that case from any source, but then again, the Dickensian dead march to the beat of which Brazilian legal proceedings slouch toward Bethlehem to be stillborn may also be a factor.
In general, however, these sorts of stories are never followed up on. The purpose of this sort of story is to create an immediate sensation, generally targeted at a specific person or institution as as service to a third-party agenda, in exchange for some quid pro quo.
The comments collected by this reporter from Brazil’s Comunique-se — by telephone, presumably — are echoed in a report issued by a committee of the House of Lords this week. Note the Lords:
The market pressures faced by news organisations have led many to scale back on investment in journalism and news gathering. Much of the news available on the internet, on the new television channels and elsewhere is repackaged from other sources.
I sometimes wonder whether these “market pressures” are not really just a phantom menace used as a thin rationale for hardcore union-busting.
At any rate, that is the theme of today’s exercise in ham-fisted translation at the speed of two-fingered typing:
Desk-Bound Journalism
Reporting produced while sitting at a desk in the newsroom: clipping service or real journalism?
Marianna Senderowicz
Comunique-se (Brazil)
July 2008
Translation: C. Brayton
Boi Zebu Editorial Services
Called “deskbound journalism,” this type of reporting has gained ground mainly due to the ease of access to information provided by the Internet, which is constantly updated by news agencies and is a tempting source for those who have too little time or money for on-the-scene reporting.
Jornalismo de gabinete literary means “office journalism,” “journalism done from the office”. Compare the English expression, “phoning it in” (doing a half-assed job.) I have engaged in some creative translation here in rendering the phrase as “desk-bound journalism.” Compare the English expressions “armchair general,” “Monday morning quarterback,” and the celebrated “pyjamas media.” –Trans.
Though no hard data exist to demonstrate that this type of reporting is on the rise, the practice, while sparking controversy among journalism professionals, has found support in a corporate culture and a readership that demand more and more agility in the processing of news, driving a perceived demand for real-time coverage.
“To a certain degree this technique is influenced by the new technologies, but there is also an attempt by news organizations to cut costs”, says Fenaj director José Torves.
Sandra de Deus of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, a Ph.D. in Information and Communications and administrative director of the National Forum of Professors of Journalism (FNPJ), believes that basing news coverage on the information and impressions of third parties represents a serious threat to the quality of journalism. “You start to lose touch with events and sources. Your picture of reality is no longer faithful when it is constructed from biased accounts of events that you, the journalist, did not witness personally, but which you simply heard from someone else”, she says. In the case of radio news, the professor’s specialty, the situation is even worse. “Nowadays the radio reporter will often simply read a news item straight off a Web site into the microphone, forgetting that radio depends more on immediacy and on-the-scene ambiance than any other medium.”
But obtaining facts from the Internet or by telephone does not necessarily lead to bad reporting. “Writing the story without leaving the newsroom has good points and bad points. Obviously, interviews are always better when conducted in person, but there is always a cost-benefit ratio to consider. And not all stories need to be reported on the scene”, points out Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto, a board member of the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association (Abraji). In her view, however, when the reporting has direct observation as its principal focus, or when it involves conflicts, that is a different matter. “If an airliner crashes in the middle of the city, it makes no sense to report the story by telephone, you have to go and see for yourself. In the specific case of investigative reporting, such as, say, a case of embezzlement from the budget of a hospital, it is vital to go to the scene and see for yourself that the equipment that ought to have been purchased has not, in fact, been received”, she adds.
Reporters v. Editors
According to Fenaj, the number of Brazilian news outlets in 2008 should grow by 16% in 2008. In the case of online news portals, this growth increases the risk of error, to the extent that the same piece of information is capable of racing around the world in the blink of an eye, while the absence of deadlines tends to produce a certain euphoria about posting news as soon as it is received. Drawing on content from various sources, in various languages, Web journalism is is now practiced mainly by editors who simply copy edit and reproduce the material they receive. Guidelines exist, however, to reduce the risk of error in this type of news operation. “There are two factors to take into account in any news report: velocity and veracity”, says Cuca Fromer, director of Editorial Projects for the Terra portal. According to Fromer, there is constant pressure to respond quickly to breaking stories, but even so, all the facts must be checked first. “We get information from news wires, police band radio, and other sources, but we make it a matter of principle to corroborate all statements before publishing them.”
Fromer notes a recent episode in which one of Brazil’s major news sites reported a supposed aviation disaster in São Paulo that was in fact nothing more than a fire in a mattress warehouse: “In that case, there was no fact-checking, just the automatic reposting of a news item from another news portal that had published the story. The result was that misinformation was published. But this is not how we instruct our copy desk to conduct itself.” Cuca says the race to be first to air with a story is a global phenomenon. “Everyone is connected and looking for a constant flow of information, which increases the chances that misinformation will circle the globe in just a handful of minutes. This scenario requires news organizations to publicly regret their errors and learn how to issue corrections as soon as the error is discovered.”
Progress?
Despite these concerns about the quality of Brazilian journalism, in some newsrooms, changes are already underway in the methods used to report stories. According to Marta Gleich, director of online news at the Grupo RBS, this trend, which has been reinforced by its general acceptance at a majority of Brazilian news organizations, is now being resisted. “At RBS, for example, we instituted an integrated newsroom for print and Internet, increasing the exchange of information and the production of content”, she relates.
According to Gleich, who has experience as reporter, editor, and editor in chief, the challenge of multimedia reporting has led more journalists to start covering events on the scene in order to provide the public with complete, reliable information. “You need videos, photos, audio interviews and other media in order to augment the story, and that sort of material you can only gather personally.”
On the moral hazards of “phone it in” participatory “citizen journalism,” see
The RBS executive relates that her organization relies on news agencies for stories that take place outside of Rio Grande and Brazil. “We prioritize local news, and do not field any permanent correspondents, except in the federal capital, Brasília. When circumstances — such an Olympic games, a natural catastrophe, elections or the like — demand direct coverage, we dispatch journalists on special assignment for a fixed period.”
In the view of Torves, however, most news organizations in Brazil have not tumbled to the problem yet, and awareness needs to be raised at media companies in order to avoid the consolidation of this “copy editor” role at the expense of the “reporter” role. “The credibility of publications who offer more detailed reporting, corroborated on the scene or from primary sources, will be a determining factor in the decision to invest more in reporting”, he says. Sandra believes that social pressure could be decisive in bringing about the return of the beat reporter. “I hope and expect that daily journalism still has a future, and that citizens will demand that journalists be able to verify facts directly.”
“If we continue down the current path, more and more of the news will consist of regurgitated press releases and wire copy,” Torves concludes.
Filed under: Brazil, Journalism, Media | Tagged: abraji, alstom, disinformation, errata, fact-check, fake news, globo, information, innovation journalism, journalism 2.0, misinformation, QoS, quality, rbs, reporting, rumors, veja
