The best medicine against the ‘virus’ of disinformation, which has infected Brazilian society with the ‘fever’ of fake news (fake news) is the return of the diploma requirement for the professional practice of journalism. This is the unanimous opinion expressed by the debaters at the public hearing held by the Communication Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, last Thursday (26).
In the opinion of deputies, teachers, businesspeople and union representatives, the best way to recover the credibility of the media would be to approve a proposed amendment to the Constitution (PEC 206/12) – entitled Brazilian Law of Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet – which reinstitutes the mandatory document for the exercise of the profession in Brazil.
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In defense of the proposition, the president of the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj), Samira Cunha noted that “in a scenario where the We have the majority of the population getting information through social networks, we need to increasingly qualify the journalism practiced in the Brazil".
Under the argument that professional journalism is the antidote against the constant 'wave of misinformation', Samira considers that “we live in a society that is based on lies propagated on a large scale and with specific objectives, and we leave aside the role of a professional who trains for at least four years to play a fundamental role in democracy”, when denouncing that, today, without the requirement of a diploma, there are cases of minors and illiterates with professional registration as journalists, openly working in the country.
‘Supreme pen’ – At the genesis of the problem, back in 2009 (first Lula government), the Federal Supreme Court (STF), unilaterally, decided that any person, regardless of training, could exercise the functions of journalist, abolishing, with the stroke of a pen, 40 years of validity of a profession regulated under the aegis of a higher education diploma, like the others that, however, were preserved.
The 'stupid' decision of the supreme ministers, at the time, would be to respond to an appeal from an employer, in this case, the Union of Radio and Television Companies in the State of São Paulo (Sertesp), together with the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), for whom the requiring the diploma would be unconstitutional, since the Constitution “guarantees to everyone the right to freedom of expression and free thought". A sophistry that, in practice, weakened the category before the bosses, in addition to muzzling the very freedom of expression that they wanted to protect.
In contrast, for the president of the Brazilian Journalism Teaching Association, Marluce Zacariotti, the compromise of freedom of expression as a pretext for abolishing the diploma is not sustainable. “The journalist does not express his opinion in the news and reports he writes. Therefore, the requirement for a diploma does not guarantee the alleged exclusivity of the right to express one's thoughts through the media or any other means”, he assessed.
By rejecting the justification of the then rapporteur of the matter in the Supreme Court, the now dean Gilmar Mendes – for whom “specific training in Journalism is not the ideal way to avoid possible risks to the community or damage to third parties” – the director of the Brazilian Press Association (ABI), Armando Rollemberg, classified the supreme decision as a ‘setback’, in addition to warning of the disastrous consequences it caused for the society.
“Journalism is everything that has nothing to do with lies. Within journalism, there is freedom of expression, but freedom of expression does not include lies, as self-serving, hateful, articulate lie, in a little more than 24 hours, can bring enormous losses to the society. Sometimes it’s not even possible to make an equivalent retraction,” he said.
'The earth is flat' – As an illustration of Rollemberg’s statements, the president of the Brazilian Association of Journalism Researchers (SBPJor), Samuel Pantoja, gave as an example the result of a survey, according to which, one in five Brazilians believes that the Earth is flat.
Addressing another angle of the issue, the journalist, professor, and deputy Amaro Neto (Republicanos-ES), author of the debate proposal, emphasized that training in journalism is an instrument for guaranteeing the quality of work. “I believe that a big step towards accelerating the fight against fake news is to make the journalism diploma mandatory, through this PEC that is stopped here in the House”, he states.
More incisively, also journalist and deputy Daniel Trzeciak (PSDB-RS) launched a direct question to the supreme minister: “I would like to ask minister Gilmar Mendes if would he perform surgery with a doctor who hadn’t sat on the medical course”?, upon realizing that “today no one wants to go to journalism school anymore. Why spend four years studying journalism if you don’t even need a diploma?”, he concludes.
