Características do jornalismo declaratório em Cuiabá durante o período eleitoral : uma análise do site MidiaNews

Abstract

The research investigates the characteristics of Declaratory Journalism during the 2020 electoral coverage in Cuiabá. What kind of knowledge does JD propose when the news is based only on statements from the sources? The voices, arguments and speeches of sources are the basis of journalistic production, and their indiscriminate reproduction can favor anti-science discourses and authoritarian governments in electoral periods or even in the pandemic. To do so, we carried out an analysis of the news published in the last two weeks of the first and second rounds of municipal electoral coverage of 2020, in Cuiabá, by the website MidiaNews. The investigation has two methodological tools to deal with the analysis corpus of this research: the Journalistic Coverage Analysis Protocol (ACJ) (SILVA E MAIA, 2011) and the Speech Act Theory (AUSTIN, 1990; SEARLE, 1995). Together, these tools form the research methodology and help to extract some of the characteristics and types of JD statements, such as the number of sources triggered, where they speak from and what their intentions are. The results point to the predominance of official sources in news production, causing coverage to focus on the candidates' agenda, and not on matters of public interest; absence of contradictory statements, in the sense of a more interpretive and mediating journalism of the Public Sphere; absence of popular voices and experts, as a way to bring more diversity in the construction of the news, and thus strengthen democracy; and Journalist Sitting, with the vast majority of articles being investigated, with professionals away from the stage of events. Such factors make journalism produce knowledge in a biased way, which weakens democracy and citizenship, as well as the construction of understandings, based on a common horizon, within the Public Sphere.