It is possible to keep using critical thinking when covering CSR themes

In the debate “CSR in the media: agenda and management”, moderator Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva raised the issue of critical coverage of corporate social responsibility (CSR), since this is a condition inherent to good journalism. According to Ricardo Gandour, director of content of newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, “journalism still finds it difficult to speak of the good, while it speaks of the evil very easily.” Actually, according to him, the media is forced to always work with the unusual, to speak of behind the scenes news. To make his point, Gandour reminds that it is common to hear the saying that the job of the newspaper is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” In his opinion, the journalists need to learn to cover the good, since it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. This also demands that communications companies invest in the education of their staff.

Caco de Paula, director of the Tourism Center of Editora Abril, believes that the novelty of the theme also hinders the coverage. He compared the current situation with the period when the business sections appeared, in the early 80s. At that time, it was very difficult to translate the economic jargon into a reader-friendly language. Similarly, according to Caco, there are different levels of understanding of the problems in the CSR area. “In general, even the editors narrow the CSR theme down to the environmental issue”, he said.

According to the director superintendent of Grupo Folha, Antonio Manuel Teixeira Mendes, the press “can’t buy into CSR for free.” According to him, the press has to be critical, try to contextualize the theme, and reveal the interests involved. “The news is never just good”, he stressed. It is not possible, for instance, to cover the issue of ethanol production, which is a current theme, without mentioning the possible side effects of its production process in the environmental and social areas.

In his comments, the director of social projects of Globo Network, Albert Alcouloumbre Junior, stressed that, in order to maintain critical thinking, it is of paramount importance to use the “good old traditional journalism” and “not to try to reinvent the wheel.” Besides, he reminded that, in general, the space in the press media is not very elastic, which makes companies compete fiercely to publish their initiatives in the social responsibility area.