Brazilian journalism and the narratives about the dictatorship during the National Truth Commission term

• In Event: Journalism and Representations of Political Change and Social Struggle

Abstract

How did news media cover dictatorship issues during the Brazilian National Truth Commission (CNV, in Portuguese) operation? Trying to answer this question, the purpose of this paper is to monitor CNV’s work in the period between July 2012 and December 2014 through observation of its routine operations and analysis of stories published by the news media. The intention of this commission was to investigate serious cases of human rights violations that occurred between 1946 and 1988, with a focus on the period of the military dictatorship (1964-1985). The commission completed its activities on December 2014. During its term, the CNV stimulated debate in the media about the memories of authoritarian rule. Using the contents of the daily news clipping produced by the CNV’s communications department, a database with 8,422 stories was created. This research uses a combination of content analysis and framing analysis to assess how news stories about the commission created new narratives about the dictatorship. Monitoring allows us to verify how the news coverage occurred, which were the most prominent periods of coverage and which were the privileged frames and sources. The main hypotheses are: (1) news coverage about human rights violations during the dictatorship will increase, but an “episodic frame” that focuses on CNV’s own agenda and activities will dominate much of this coverage; (2) the journalists resort mainly to the official sources, which is also exercised by the truth commission members.

Author

• Fernanda N Sanglard, UFMG