Ameaças para silenciar o mensageiro: ataques e agressões aos profissionais do jornalismo como notícia no Jornal Nacional

Abstract

The National Federation of Journalists recorded a significant increase in violent episodes against the press in 2020 in Brazil. The following year, a record of cases was registered by the entity. During this period, the TV Globo and its professionals were frequent targets of attacks, mainly motivated by the coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. Furious, the aggressors forcibly took the reporters' microphones and even damaged the equipment; they even used physical force as an alternative to block the issuance of information that contradicted their convictions. The objective of this research was to understand how Jornal Nacional (JN) narrates and defends the role of Journalism in reporting the aggressions suffered by professionals, in addition to understanding external changes in the ways of recording press activity. For this, the episodes of aggression broadcasted on JN between 2020 and 2021 were mapped, bearing in mind the records registered in that period. Through the Analysis of Audiovisual Materiality (Coutinho, 2018), the approaches used by Jornal Nacional when reporting aggressive episodes were analyzed, from the perspective of the Dramaturgy of Telejournalism (Coutinho, 2012). By means of interviews, changes in the production routine were investigated to protect the integrity of journalists and, at the same time, ensure the recording of possible attacks. Thus, it was possible to understand the narrative and editing strategies used by JN in the defense of professionals and the exercise of the press. Therefore, it was evidenced that the main newscast of the open TV in the country takes into account different news values present in aggressive episodes against journalists. The Jornal Nacional defends, above all, press freedom and democracy, but with little emphasis on victimized professionals. In the coverage of episodes, the journalist becomes the news, reversing a professional practice. If historically, telejournalism always showed conflicts, now it is inserted in a battle for information. On day to day, the journalist had to adapt his routine to protect himself and register possible attacks against the teams.