Folha’s ombudsman has a mandate renewed for one year – 05/20/2023 – Power

This is a year without elections for the top echelon of Brazilian politics. However, there are significant challenges for the Sheetaccording to ombudsman José Henrique Mariante.

For him, the first year of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (PT) government, environmental deterioration in Brazil and in the world and the regulation of social networks are among the themes that will demand increasing attention and preparation from the newspaper’s team.

Mariante has just completed her term as ombudsman for the Sheet renewed for one year. Thus, his period in office will extend until May 2024.

He is the 14th professional to occupy the post, created by Sheet in 1989. Among the duties of the ombudsman are the production of a weekly column, published on Sundays, and an internal critique from Monday to Friday, distributed to the editorial office. It is also responsible for forwarding complaints and comments from readers to journalists.

To guarantee the independence of the occupant of the function, he cannot be fired during this period.

At Sheet Since 1991, Mariante has held various positions, including Sports Editor and Editorial Assistant Secretary (in two different periods).

With regard to reporting on the Lula government, the ombudsman argues that the newspaper should open space for a more varied group of sources, offering new points of view to readers.

“Discussions on the fiscal framework are an example. A person repeatedly heard by the Sheet is Marcos Mendes, one of the fathers of the spending cap [adotado no governo Michel Temer, em 2016]that is, an interested party”, he says.

“The newspaper also needs to listen to specialists who are not connected to the market. When there is an opening like that, considerations arise that enrich the debate.”

It is also up to Sheetaccording to him, to monitor all the moves in the discussion regarding the regulation of social networks, “which play an important role in the outbreak of harmful episodes”.

The Fake News PL should have been voted on by the Chamber of Deputies in early May, but Arthur Lira (PP-AL), President of the House, decided to postpone it.

Finally, among these most urgent challenges, Mariante points to environmental issues. “The subject has gained more space in the newspaper, but it needs to gain transversality, that is, all sections should treat it as a priority.”

When evaluating the last few months, he remembers initiatives of the Sheet that upset a significant number of readers. Editorials —texts that express the opinion of the vehicle— with harsher criticisms of Lula have provoked emphatic reactions.

Readers were upset, for example, by the aggressive tone of the editorial “It’s the economy, Lula”, on October 8 last year.

“Lula can and should be held accountable, obviously, but never more so than Bolsonaro. It is the president who is indebted to democracy and promises to increase the institutional gap if he loses or if he wins at the polls in the second round. Normalizing the shipwreck is not option,” the ombudsman wrote in his column a week later.

Another moment of scathing complaints took place in December, when the newspaper dismissed columnists of different profiles due to cost containment. Readers, says Mariante, especially complained about the departure of Janio de Freitas. “His resignation especially upset those who started reading the paper in the 1970s and 1980s.”

On the other hand, the Sheet he had good moments covering the 2022 elections. One of the reports highlighted by him is “Guedes’ Plan provides for a minimum wage and retirement without correction for past inflation”.

The text revealed, days before the second round, a plan by the then Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, to reformulate the spending ceiling and curb the growth of expenses in case of re-election of Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The journalist links the elections to two other moments in the country’s recent political life: one prior to the election, the pro-democracy demonstrations by civil society, which peaked in August of last year; and the other later, the coup acts of January 8 of this year.

“A Sheet did the best coverage of the August events. It helped draw attention, especially from the elites, to the institutional risks that the country was experiencing at that time. But the newspaper should have gone further, it should have placed itself as an active participant in the movement, as it did in Diretas in the 1980s.”

It is still too early, he says, to assess the newspaper’s performance in covering the attacks on the three Powers. On this topic, he launches a provocation: “We as a society, not just the media, are seriously discussing what happened so that episodes of this type are not normalized?”.