Cannot be proved or denied = can be published

On April 5th 2009, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo had a perfect “Liberty Valance moment” when it published a front page story about Dilma Rousseff's activities during the military dictatorship in Brazil.

It is known that Dilma Roussef was part of the resistance movement against the military dictatorship — she herself claims to be proud of her past. The story published by Folha had a spam email as main source and showed the image of a (later proved to be fake) criminal record for Rousseff. The story — Dilma's group planned Delfim's kidnapping — was about Rousseff's alleged role in an event that never actually happened: the kidnapping of then Finance Minister, Delfim Netto.

The newspaper alleged that the information was found in the Public Archives of São Paulo State (DEOPS). That, however, is far from truth: the file simply does not exist in the public archives. A simple investigation would have shown that the file was a fake — for starters, the “captured” stamp was not used on this kind of file from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS).

Even worse: when the paper published the story, the image had been circulating on the Internet for more than a year  mostly in extreme right-wing websites, such as Ternuma (Terrorismo Nunca Mais, “Terrorism never more”) , a site that supports Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra (the first Brazilian military officer to be declared a torturer in a judicial sentence) and that posted the fake file on the 30 November 2008.

The reaction to the story was immediate. All over the Internet blogs and sites started to question the information and the newspaper. Dilma Rousseff sent a letter to Folha de S.Paulo asking for clarification and presenting expert analyses proving the fraud. The paper neglected to publish it.

Mistakes do happen in journalism but one can’t help but wonder: why the largest newspaper in Brazil would so promptly publish such a serious denouncement without proper investigation? Was it only a naïve error or does the newspaper have other motivations? Even more important: if José Serra was the subject of story, would Folha de S.Paulo have acted the same way it did?

More than one year later, Folha never took responsibility for setting aside good journalistic standards. It still claims to produce impartial journalism. The only attempt at retraction by the newspaper was published on 25 April, twenty days after the fake file appeared on the front page. The text, entitled “Dilma file's authenticity not proven”, affirmed that the file’s authenticity “cannot be proved — just as it cannot be denied”.

If the paper really wanted to completely abdicate from assuming responsibility for its acts, they should have put it in simpler terms: “we just preferred to publish the legend!”

 A humorous fake file of José Serra produced by blogger André Lux: its authenticity “cannot be proved — just as it cannot be denied”. Would Folha de S.Paulo publish it?