93 Years Old, But The Mind Of...

02/24/2014 - 13h59

Many people were surprised by Folha's editorial positions, summarized last Wednesday on the newspaper's birthday.

For a lady advanced in years (93), Folha is even somewhat modern. It supports the legalization of drugs, as long as it's "gradual" and approved by a plebiscite or referendum. It says gay marriage should be on an equal footing with heterosexual, without the need to take it to a vote.

The newspaper considers an "urban congestion charge" indispensable. It favors allowing foreign doctors, which it considers a palliative measure. In the area of economics, is supports reducing public expenditures and increasing the retirement age.

Folha does not follow Scheherazade's line: it is against hardening prison sentences and against reducing the age of responsibility, but it believes it is necessary to change the law so that minors who commit serious crimes be jailed longer.

In politics, it favors an end to mandatory voting because voting should be a right and not an obligation imposed by the state. It is correct to conclude that the newspaper places itself in the "social democracy spectrum," according to the opinion editor, Uirá Machado. "But without getting confused with parties. The newspaper is non-partisan and does not support candidates."

"What Folha thinks" (folha.com/no1414326) was useful for readers who do not have patience for editorials and to undo mistaken impressions about the newspaper. "I believed 'animal' clarified the positions in controversial topics, some of them quite thorny. Certainly, I don't still see you with the same eyes," said geographer Paulo Castro, 26.

Because of some columnists and the way the newspaper covered the protests last June, Paulo thought Folha was more conservative. "It's good to know that is not the whole truth," he said.

At a newspaper with more than 100 columnists, the tumult of opinions is so much that often the official voice, expressed in editorials, is drowned out. Initiatives like this one, to organize viewpoints taken through the years, help readers to better understand the newspaper they are holding in their hands. It also serves as a way to check: knowing what Folha thinks, it is easier to demand that the news retain plurality without influence by editorials.

DECEPTIVE IMAGES

There was a 4-year-old Syrian boy, running away from his country, crossing the desert alone. Another Syrian, abandoned, slept between the graves of his father and mother, victims of the civil war.

These stories, which are heartbreaking, circulated on the Internet and were published by some news organizations. Fortunately, they were false.

The boy Marwan, with his plastic bag, was not found walking alone toward Jordan, as was reported Tuesday on Folha's website and those of "Estado de São Paulo" and Yahoo, among others.

Marwan was a few moments behind the rest of his family, who walked farther ahead, when he was approached by United Nations refugee workers.

One of them put the photo of Marwan on Twitter without saying anything about a solitary crossing of the desert. Increasing the dramatic pinch was the anchor on CNN, which has 122,000 followers on social networks. From there, the picture spread.

The other boy, with a red blanket, is not Syrian, the hills around him are not graves, and he was not sleeping.

In this case, there was bad faith. The photo by a Saudi photographer was plucked from Instagram and given a fake caption. It was an artistic photo essay, in an arranged scene, about the "irreplaceable love of parents." The boy is the nephew of the photographer, he is not an orphan and does not live in Syria.

The propagator of the lie is an American who lives in Saudi Arabia and has 179,000 followers on Twitter. The image exploded on the web in January, but the big news organizations did not fall into the trap.

The two cases illustrate why you can't believe what is on social networks where "someone who tells a tale changes the story."

Translated by JOHN WRIGHT

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