Jornalistic Coverage of Sexual Violence against Children in Brazil

Journalistic Coverage of Sexual Violence against Children in Brazil

By Ricardo Corredor Cure

Impact: Social and Behavioural Change Conference

March 29, 2011. Geneva

CI - UNAIDS

The Context

About Brazil• Recent democracy (military dictatorship: 1964-1985)

• Governments begin to tackle two of the of the country’s main challenges: poverty and inequality

• Conditional Cash Transfer and other social policies prove effective: 13,4 million people raised above the poverty line from 2003 to 2009. Gini Index fell down.

• By 2020 Brazil shall become the 5th – or the 4th – largest economy in the world

• Anyway, poverty + inequality levels are still very high

Media in Brazil

• Audience from TV news programs: 40 million people

• 5% growth of newspaper circulation

• 7% growth of magazines circulation

• Good credibility of Brazilian journalists: 76%. Firemen (98%); teachers and doctors (87%); policemen (51%); bank executives (47%); politicians (11%)

• 88% of business executives read newspapers

• Politicians regularly have newspapers as their main source of information

ITCs in Brazil• Internet is growing fast: 44% of urban population

connected; 60% of people between 16 and 44 years old accessing daily

• 13,7 million computers sold last year

• 5th country in use of social media; 2nd in use of Twitter

• First country in time spent online

However…

• Traditional media influences social media (and not the other way around…)

• 67% of the users don’t believe that social media can satisfy their information needs

Sexual Violence against Children in Brazil

• Problem difficult to measure (shame, fear, illegal activity…)

• Multi-causal, but poverty continues to be a relevant factor

• Cultural roots

• Challenges in terms of articulation among the federal, state and local level

• There have been improvements but still is a crucial issue

• National Plan build in 2000 by government officials and civil society representatives (Brazil one of the pioneers)

• Secretariat of Human Rights at the federal government has a division dedicated exclusively to the problem

Media and Sexual Violence against Children

ANDI’s Strategy: 2000-2010

Media for Development

• Set and frame the agenda in the public sphere around critical issues, in a pluralistic manner (agenda setting)

• Supply reliable and contextual information for citizens (if you know your rights, you can demand they are fulfilled…)

• Exert public oversight on government officials and public policies (the watchdog role)

ANDI’s Strategies

• Mobilization o Tim Lopes Investigative Journalism Contesto Pitch stories for regional and national outletso Daily help-desk for journalists and sources of information

from civil societyo Online database of qualified sources of information

• Trainings for journalists, sources of information and college studentso Workshops for journalists and civil society organizationso Grants for final undergraduate dissertations

ANDI’s Strategies• Media Monitoring

o Regular monitoring of 50 newspapers (sexual violence as one of the main issues/keywords)

o In-depth analysis of sexual violence coverage in 2000 and 2006

• Publications/Websiteso Books: Grito dos Inocentes (Cry of the Innocent); Investigative

Journalism: The Tim Lopes Journalism Contest

o 3 Guides/Manuals on media and sexual violence: 1 for journalists, 1 for public officials; 1 for information sources from civil society

o Online guide on sexual violence (mini-site)

Tim Lopes Investigative Journalism Contest

• Backbone of the whole strategy

• Five editions: 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010. Next : 2012

• 345 applications

• 67 winner journalists

• 5 categories (TV, Radio, Print, Alternative + Online, Special)

• 31 series producing 150 special news stories in TV, radio, newspapers and internet, focusing different aspects of the phenomenon: sexual tourism, human trafficking, poverty, criminal networks, corruption, impunity, internet use, etc.

The Tim Lopes Contest Model

• Rather than recognizing published stories, it gives grants to promising reporting proposals

• Proposal must come with a written commitment from the outlet’s top editors

• Winners receive financial support for a more qualified investigation (doesn’t cover the outlets regular expenses)

• Winners also receive technical assistance, although respecting their professional independence

• Partnership with ABRAJI (Association of Investigative Journalists) + FENAJ (National Federation of Journalists)

Impact and Evaluation

Content Analysis Methodology

• Regular monitoring of the Brazilian press since 1996 (54 newspapers and 10 magazines of national circulation)

• ANDI Brazil Network monitors additional 43 daily local and regional papers in 9 states

• ANDI Latin American Network monitors additional 59 newspapers in 11 countries

• All stories focusing children are clipped on a daily basis

• Depending on the scope, composite month or composite week samples are used

Content Analysis Methodology

• Clipping process can involve physical and/or online content

• Classification tool (questionnaire) covers more than a 150 items and is defined in consultation with experts on media studies and on children’s rights issues

• News story structure is analyzed by different criteria: – Main and secondary themes– Quantity and diversity of sources of information consulted– Mentions to public policy and legislation– Mentions to solutions to the problems covered

• Each new story is read following the content analysis parameters; findings are fed into a database software

Quantity of News Stories

Evolution of News Coverage - Sexual Abuse/ Exploitation of Children*

Year News from sampleTotal news (estimated)

2000 167 2.004

2006 457 5.484

2009 502 6.024

Evolution 2000-2009 200,60%

* Sample based on composite month methodology

Sexual Violence in Relation to Other Issues

Evolution of Most Covered Issues – Sexual Violence vs. others

More coveredissues

% (in relation to the total of news analyzed)

2001 2005 2009

Education 28,75% 24,10% 25,81%

Violence 21,12% 12,48% 17,44%

Rights & Justice* 11,14% 13,56% 3,10%

Health 12,78% 8,83% 10,70%

Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

3,08% 4,08% 3,58%

* Parameters changed in 2009, to reflect new policies focused on the issue

Quality of News: Diversity of Sources

Impact of the Tim Lopes Journalistic Contest

Comparative Analysis: Tim Lopes Stories

Parameters

Tim Lopes Stories

Sexual Violence in general

(2009)

Children’s Rights in general

(2009)

References to legislation 18% 9,7% 5,7%

References to ECA* 13,8% 8,3% 1,9%

Mentions solutions 7,8% 10,2% 6,9%

Denounciations 86,2% 19,0% 9,4%

Children’s Rights Councils as sources of information

10% 5,2% 0,7%

Use of statistics 9,6% 6,8% 8,1%

* Brazilian Bill of Children’s Rights

Comparative Analysis: Tim Lopes Stories

Parameter

Tim Lopes Stories

Sexual Violence in general

(2009)

Children’s Rights in

general (2009)

Sources of information per news story(average)

2,83 1,64 1,46

Tim Lopes Impact: Journalistic Culture

• Winner journalists gain a much deeper understanding of the problem and commit to it even if change outlets/jobs

• Winners become focal points within their newsrooms

• Winners end up receiving other prestigious awards

• Mainstreaming of the problem in the media:– In newsrooms (editors and directors): outlets give more time or

space than originally defined by the proposal sent to the Contest

– In media groups: besides the winning outlet, other outlets from the same group decide to cover the story as well, bringing even more public attention to the issue

Tim Lopes Impact: Public Policies/State System

• Improvement of ECA* (Brazilian Bill of Children’s Rights) through Amendment 485, regarding child pornography (IstoÉ/A Tarde)

• District Attorney from Ceara State ordered 184 state offices to investigate local governments actions on the problem (O Povo)

• Winner stories used as evidence for prosecution (TV Record)

• NGO from Para state created a project to deal with sexual trafficking after the winning story was broadcasted (TV Record)

Stories draw constant attention to the weakness of the system (corruption, lack of resources, inefficiency, impunity) but also discuss best practices

The Strategy’s impacts on Society+

The Learnings and the Challenges

Impact in society

• Difficult to measure, due to specific nature of the problem

• ANDI didn’t develop a specific methodology for measuring this kind of impact (complex and expensive)

• Based on the “agenda setting” approach, ANDI however has one hypothesis:

The level of public awareness on sexual violence against children in Brazilian society has grown in recent years

due to more qualified media coverage

Impact in society• 18 of May: National Day to Combat Sexual

Violence (created in 2000 is already the third most important date for children’s rights in the country – ANDI played a central role in it)

• President Lula made the issue a priority regarding his social policies

• A Congressional Investigation Panel on the issue was established

• Significant growth in the number of denunciations at the national hotline

Number of calls to hotline

Year Total

2003 4,494

2004 3,774

2005 5,138

2006 13,380

2007 24,942

2008 30,508

2009 29,756

Learnings and Challenges• It is central that public policies have a clear communication

component since the planning stages (as it was the case with the National Plan to Combat Sexual Violence)

• Permanent and sustained action with newsrooms is key: – Social problems are complex, dynamic and multifold, the

same happens with public policies to combat them

– Communication Schools curricula doesn’t cover social issues

– High rotation of editors and reporters within the newsroom

– Changes in editorial policy

• Media in Brazil it’s not a homogeneous sector; important to develop actions accordingly

Learnings and Challenges

• ANDI’s strategy is threefold (Mobilization / Monitoring / Capacity Building) and it is important to have all the three components interacting constantly

• Journalists talking to journalists (peer to peer approach) works much better than experts telling what is right

• Collaborative attitude works better with the newsrooms than a conflictive approach (but you must keep enough independence to criticize when necessary!)

Media for Development

Collaboration between media and civil society:

“For the press to effectively function as a platform for the expression of citizens’ interests, it needs to cultivate and maintain strong ties to civic society. This is a fundamental condition for the press to nurture citizenship, cover multiple perspectives, report issues that affect a wide diversity of publics, and facilitate civic dialogue and citizens’ participation.”

(S. Waisbord, in “Can civic society change journalism? The experience of civic advocacy journalism in Latin America”, 2009)

Learnings and Challenges

* In 2005 the methodology was adjusted to reduce the volume of clipped news. Nevertheless, coverage kept growing.

** Media analysis from 2008 is still being developed.

Brazilian news media tends to respond positively to social issues

Number of stories on Children’s Rights topics: 45 Newspapers – 1996-2009

Learnings and Challenges

• There is a limit on what can be achieved, due to the outlets commercial decisions and editorial policies: in some of them, violence’s coverage continues to be sensationalistic

Safeguarding Children’s Rights 2000 2006

Include detailed descriptions of the victim’s body or condition 4,60% 5,20%

Cite the names of the children or adolescents 3,10% 14,0%

Include photographs explicitly depicting the violence to which the victims were subjected

1,80% 0,20%

Include photographs which enable identification of children 0,90% 2,20%

Learnings and Challenges

• There is a limit on what can be achieved, due to the outlets commercial decisions and editorial policies: in some of them, violence’s coverage continues to be sensationalistic

Learnings and Challenges• Other significant limit: the Brazilian media landscape has a

deficit regarding democratic policies on communication – There is not a comprehensive regulatory framework and

what’s available is outdated (Broadcast law is from 1963)

– Regional media outlets/groups owned by politicians: the “mini-Berlusconis” syndrome (which level of watchdog/investigative journalism can we expect ?)

• Communication policies are in the agenda right now in Brazil and Latin America: the debate is gaining momentum

• ANDI is participating actively in the debate and has created a new programmatic area focused on the issue

Learnings and Challenges

• To achieve sustained impact is not an easy task

• Permanent funding throughout the years guaranteed consolidation, expansion an improvement of the actions and strategies – this is not common!

• Childhood Brazil has been a strategic partner since 2000 and supported ANDI in the development of the various methodologies on Media and Sexual Violence

• The partnership also allowed ANDI to leverage funds with other institutions: Petrobras, Brazilian Secretariat of Human Rights, Save the Children, Unicef, ILO

Thank YouObrigadoGracias

Ricardo Corredor Curercorredor@andi.org.br

www.andi.org.br