Group was created in June 2020 on the grounds that an alternative system would be needed to report covid data
The consortium of media vehicles created for the daily dissemination of the number of deaths and cases of covid-19 announced this Saturday (28.jan.2023) its end. The following were part of the group: g1, Estadão, Folha de S.Paulo, UOL, THE Globe and Extra.
The media outlets published similar texts around 8:00 pm announcing that they will no longer jointly publicize after 965 days. The group said it had closed “its mission to ensure transparency about the impact of the coronavirus and vaccination”.
Although the consortium stated over these 965 days that a joint and independent investigation was carried out with professionals from the 6 vehicles, in reality the group depended on data from the Ministry of Health like any other publication that disclosed the exact same information. When the federal government system had problems, impacting most states, the consortium was sold and it was evident that there was no type of independent verification.
This is what happened during the data blackout that followed for more than 1 month after the December 10, 2021 hacker attack. Several states, such as São Paulo, were unable to access federal systems to obtain information from their own municipalities. With that, they began to have problems reporting new cases and deaths from covid.
It’s an awkward situation. States need their cities to put information into the federal system. Only later, each state health department seeks this information already consolidated in Brasilia and makes the disclosure.
Because of this dependency, to have a truly independent system, the now-defunct consortium of media outlets would need to go directly to each of the 5,000+ cities to get the information. This was never done, although when releasing his statistics this was not made clear to readers, listeners and viewers who consumed the data. One was left with the impression that these consortium vehicles were acting 100% independently of the federal government. That was never true.
In December 2021, for example, during the data blackout, the consortium was unable to obtain the information independently precisely because most states also depended on the information that was compiled by the federal government.
THE Power360 uses official information released daily by the Ministry of Health, with data collected from state health departments. This digital newspaper did not participate in the consortium of press vehicles, but it always presented its readers with the same data collected at the Ministry of Health – the same ones that were sent to the States and then collected by the consortium.
Virtually identical data
THE Power360 also showed, in August 2020 and December 2021, that the difference in the numbers released by the press consortium and the Ministry of Health ranged from 0.5% to 1%. And even when there was some relevant variation, over a few days the discrepancy was diluted and the overall result remained the same.
Origin of consortium
The initiative came about when the Ministry of Health changed the platform with data from the pandemic in the country. The group is formed by vehicles The globe, Extra, The State of S. Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo and UOL.
The group emerged after the Ministry of Health took down, on June 5, 2020, the Coronavirus Dashboard. When the system returned, it started to hide the accumulated total of deaths and cases, indicating only the number of deaths and confirmed diagnoses in 24 hours.
The court intervened and ordered the panel to display the full data on the epidemic in the country again.
The disruption lasted less than a week. Even so, the media consortium was created on June 8, 2020 on the grounds that there needed to be an alternative system to keep information flowing during another eventual data blackout.
In case the Ministry of Health does not disclose the data for some reason, any communication vehicle can activate the Health departments in the States and obtain the information.
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