The Press Has Divorced Itself from Conservatives, Journalist Believes

I was happy every Monday afternoon this semester. In an elective course at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), in a class of very few students, I received from Dr. Emerson Urizzi Cervi the impetus, so dear to me, to discuss journalism. Cervi has a sober journalistic style that reminds me of newsrooms that did not succumb to the allure of the internet.

Sgarbe: Dear Professor Cervi, the readers of this website would be bored if I didn't tell them that I wrote to you when I was still in high school and dreamed of being a journalist. I remember being interested in political communication. Well, as is the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies, here I am about to write my first article for your consideration. Having overcome the main emotional aspect of this conversation, I move on to the next. That is, the cold feeling that watching television journalism causes me. It is not, evidently, a matter of personal taste, but a collegial, collective, and communal dimension of journalism. Despite my conviction that it is not possible to do mass journalism as we conceived it decades ago, it is possible and necessary, it is just and necessary, that television journalism resort to the basic literature of what constitutes news. I refer directly to the "new generation", which has at its disposal reporters of excellent quality, and through whom, via interpersonal relationships, the DNA of journalism can be transferred. I am very seriously suspicious of any journalism that does not clearly address the "commercial-editorial" dilemma. And my first question is: which came first? The chicken or the egg? Is flabby journalism the product of a flabby community?

Cervi: Sgarbe, journalism is a human activity, constrained, limited, and empowered by the social context in which it finds itself. Twenty-first-century journalism will not be the same as twentieth-century journalism, which cannot be compared to nineteenth-century journalism simply because the society of each moment in which journalism is inserted is specific. We need to avoid some exaggerations if we want to understand the role of journalism in twenty-first-century society. The first is technological determinism. It is not technology that shapes journalism, but rather journalism that makes use of available technologies to shape itself. The second is the excessive centrality of journalism in the world.

Journalism is a professional activity and a social institution that integrates the so-called intermediary institutions. Journalism, by nature, mediates the relationship between people and people, people and institutions, people and more abstract social concepts.

So, journalism plays its role well when it manages to mediate social relations in a relevant way, that is, in a consequential way. Historically, mass journalism is an intermediary institution for social stability. It presents the expected rules and behaviors (of course there are cases of journalism used for revolutionary purposes, but this is not the rule). However, and here is an important element, the positive consequence of the intermediary role does not depend only on who mediates, but on the expectations of those who are at the "ends" of the intermediation processes - outside the direct scope of journalism - the sources, on one hand, and the public, on the other. If we want answers about twenty-first-century journalism, we need to ask the sources and the public what they expect from twenty-first-century journalism, not the journalists directly.

Sgarbe: When I read your paragraph, I thought", I have to come back with at least a few interviews in which I ask people what they expect from journalism". Obviously, this is not the case, but I had a reporter's impulse. I understand that to keep journalism alive, as has been done in other eras, we will have to deal with communities absurdly different from those we had ten or twenty years ago. These rapid changes, sometimes justified by technological contributions or even by the severity of a pandemic, have little to do with cell phones and vaccines themselves - items that are much more symptoms than causes. After the fascist uprising and Covid-19, we are in a post-war period. Let's go back a bit. After the First World War, we experienced the avant-garde art movements, among other less singular effects. Psychoanalysis and religious fundamentalism also came out of there. However, in the case of these last two, the results were completely different. For the former, the conclusion is that the end is inevitable and desired, while the latter clings to the harshness of a few phrases that encourage waiting for the return of the Messiah. I understand that, as is expected of history to repeat itself, our present has traces of those patterns. It is utopian, but it would be very good if individuals were able to deal with their internal problems before going on the public stage. Maybe in a thousand years. There are many scenarios and micro-scenarios on the screen, so I am aware that the following excerpt is imprecise. We are polarized more or less like this: on one side, the academy, the cult of scientific investigation (a few hours ago, I said that believing in science without restrictions makes science a religion - it didn't go over well with the group, but I don't care, in this case); on the other, the powerful God who will avenge the wicked and distinguish us from the perverse. I think both are delusional, for this reason here: what good is all this if what is sought is not peace? It will be very difficult to get answers from these people about journalism. Meanwhile, my bet is on precision journalism and a brilliant capacity for dialogue and good humor - with whomever.

Cervi: Well, if I understood you correctly, we have broadened the discussion, moving beyond journalism itself. If so, I agree with your proposal. If we take journalism for what it is: a professional activity with collective impact as its purpose, we will realize that it can only be understood when placed in front of other institutions, groups, and social norms.

The collective purpose of journalism is to meet society's demands for information.

When this purpose is successful, journalistic information serves as a social amalgam, shaping and uniting other social institutions. In other words, the purpose of journalistic information is social cohesion, not distension. The typical phenomenon of the 21st century is that journalism as a purpose faces competition from the dissemination of content and information with the opposite objective of social cohesion. An interesting discussion would be that of freedom as a right. Like any other, there are no absolute rights in any society. Ultimately, even the right to life is not absolute in many societies. What happened in the 20th century is that the struggles for the right to expand and democratize information, which are means, left the ends, which is social cohesion, in the background. It is necessary to bring the discussion about the purposes of freedom of expression back into the public debate. I understand that this was not what you proposed, so I'll stop here. Your proposal was to look at contemporary social conflicts from the micro level, the individual. And, in this case, you point out which institutions have the most impact on social behavior starting from the individual: the church, notably. Religion has the ability to cross from the private to the public sphere without the need for any filter. We will only understand personal conflicts at the beginning of the 21st century when we think about how religions are addressing the differences between spiritual power and material power. When religion focuses on material power, it is because it has already lost its essence, which is spiritual control. From then on, it tends to be increasingly involved in worldly issues and less in spiritual ones. All of society loses, but mainly religion is the biggest loser. Addressing individuals' crises, conflicts, dissensions, the formation of social bubbles from the role of institutions has a greater explanatory capacity than falling into technological determinism, which tends to be a dead end.

Sgarbe: Pedro, we've been talking for so long, and for so long we've never met in person, that I have the impression we're back in the 90s, with the idea of the web-friend — (laughs). Something that frequently unites us, back to the reality of this opinion piece, is journalism, especially, ironically, opinion pieces. This reminds me of my idol, Gladimir Nascimento. He prevented us, beginners that we were, from airing listeners' opinions without a criteria of respect for the individual expressing the opinion and for the one who would hear it. Something like Noah's sons covering up their old man who had passed out drunk. Having introduced the subject in the worst possible way, I ask if you think the press in 2022 is right or wrong to let so many jackasses pass as columnists, interviewees, etc. Shouldn't we avoid exposing these brethren to ridicule?

Pedro Ribeiro: Dear journalist Vinícius Sgarbe. In speaking with you, this old survivor of letters, or of the pen, as Nilson Monteiro says, feels gratified and certain that I will leave here with learning and knowledge. Having been honored as one of the "Voices of Paraná", in Professor Aroldo Murá's collection of personalities from Paraná, and now speaking with you, I even think I have a little importance or history in our journalism, where I started at Gazeta do Povo 45 years ago. A little. Just. Opinion pieces! You have no idea how many arrive for me per day at Paraná Portal. Each one is hair-raising. Therefore, after a filter, the ones I find interesting, I put a footnote: this article does not necessarily represent the opinion of this newspaper and is the sole responsibility of its author. Today, dear Sgarbe, with social media and so-called citizen journalism, everyone has contributed, in one way or another, with "opinion", to the construction of democracy and in the public sphere. Everyone has their reason. These are articles that, in many cases, spark debates, radical or not, and generate much controversy. Everyone who writes an article has full confidence that their opinion is correct and, sometimes, we have dogmatic examples. We can never confuse opinion pieces with journalistic reports, because, for me, journalism, although a space for counterpoint, its commitment is to the truth, to the reporting of facts, duly investigated. It is neutral. It has its values of freedom, dignity, respect, and openness to opposing viewpoints. Journalism, for me, my dear friend, is the pillar of democracy. Without newspapers, there is no democracy. It's difficult to have to, for example, tell a colleague that his article is nothing more than a press release of personal or corporate interest. He might be offended. I prefer to say that "the editorial board will evaluate it" (laughs).

Sgarbe: Today, I came across one of those podcast clips where a man says "only a fool doesn't change his mind". It even reminds me of the Free cigarette ad. I think that man is right. We can revise an opinion based on new facts. I'm reading a great book by Bion, "Learning from Experience", a psychoanalytic text. I frequently ask myself, daily, what have I learned, after all? One thing is that sarcasm can be very harmful to interpersonal relationships. With these relationships damaged, it becomes more difficult to transfer knowledge. I believe that sarcasm can even be a hindrance for those who are searching for truth. What I argue is that we, journalists, cannot bear the weight of a single point of view, we have to escape the slavery of "lacrolândia" [a pejorative term for excessively politically correct or "woke" culture]. A strong opinion is welcome — very different from the silly comments anchors might make because they have nothing to say. A strong opinion requires a strong individual, a "whole woman", a "whole man". It seems difficult for the 2022 journalist to understand that they don't need to, that they still don't need to, save the media's bacon, that the commercial and editorial roles are very well established. They have to do their job, be loved by their own family, by their friends, but they don't need to beg for success when reporting news.

Pedro Ribeiro: Abandoning a radical, intolerant thought and changing it with conviction is not shameful, on the contrary, it is knowing how to recognize that the earth is round and not flat, that life goes on. It's healthy, it's good for the soul. Reflecting and being self-critical about points of view oxygenates our brain and makes us follow a true path. Our country, one of the largest democracies in the world, demands this. It is a country that experiences and breathes freedom, at least in post-dictatorship journalism. What we see are some specific things like intolerance regarding electronic voting machines, coup attempts, small things that don't even scratch the democratic system. Nothing violent. Having an opinion is a right, but stupidity is unforgivable, because you have time to learn and innovate. As a journalist who writes editorials (opinion pieces of my own and of the newspaper's line of thought), I make mistakes and try to correct my mistakes and, sometimes, by changing my opinion. This is not shameful for me. Many friends ask me: are you going to vote for the thief? I answer with the puffed-up chest of a non-partisan journalist that I vote for whoever is the best and, in our case, today, for whoever is the least bad. The thief may have learned on the "pau de arara" [a torture device], with whips on his back, but the fool, the radical, is worse. This is my "opinion" and I can change it if someone proves to me that we will have, on the other side, an economic and social program for our country that privileges the thin layer of society and not the little more than 500 congressmen and another 55,000 authorities who have privileged jurisdiction. Secret budgets, tons of money from the Electoral Fund. This doesn't fit with my journalistic line of thought. In this case, I'm even radical and sometimes I overplay my hand. But I don't bend my knees. I see many fellow journalists today who have a correct line and pray by the book of good journalism like someone who swears with their hand on the Bible or before the Court, to tell the truth, only the truth. Our country is lacking in leadership. Brazil, today, is the reflection of its own rearview mirror, or mirror. Best regards, Sgarbe.

Sgarbe: Thanks for the lesson, Pedro! Best regards.

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