Aida Franco de Lima – OPINION
April 7th marks Journalist's Day. And there are a lot of people out there riding the wave. Things got worse in 2010, when the Supreme Federal Court (STF) decided that it was no longer necessary to study journalism to be a journalist.
It's that simple. As if, overnight, they decreed that you wouldn't need to study civil engineering to be an engineer. As if you didn't need to attend law school to be a lawyer. You'd just need to know how to lay bricks, mix mortar; you'd just need to put on a suit and go to jail... Everyone would be a civil engineer, a lawyer, and so on.
For the STF, to demand the diploma is to curb freedom of expression. As if the role of the journalist, with the exception of opinion journalism, was limited to saying what one thinks and not giving a voice to society.
With this turnaround, with this setback, in not requiring that people attend a university to at least have the chance to learn what ethical conduct is, what goes against sensationalism, and even the difference between more and but; with this U-turn on credibility, on labor legislation, communication in Brazil has become a no man's land.
And to make matters worse, Bolsonaro tried to eliminate the registration of journalists and other professions, through Provisional Measure (MP) 905. Thus, with the publication of this MP, on November 11, 2019, the document stopped being issued. But since this MP was not voted on in the Senate, it was revoked, and, on April 20, 2020, the registrations returned. However, without the requirement of a diploma.
- We are seeing a group of politicians trying to prevent the voting of important projects in the Federal Congress, to put amnesty on the agenda. Not to punish those who left their homes to cause trouble in Brasília last year, but rather to benefit politicians who are wetting their pants in fear of justice.
Priorities, right? Today, anyone can post on social media, share fake news disguised as information, and when the siege closes in, they simply delete it and disappear. Journalists are not the guardians of the truth. But at the very least they can and should be held accountable for what they produce.
The credibility of the news and the commitment to sources are the greatest treasure of a journalist. There was a time when journalists were forged in newsrooms. Or in the pages of books like Olavo Bilac and Lima Barreto. And those who entered as office boy and reached the position of editor, who obtained the title of provisional.
If you didn't graduate from university, if you didn't graduate from newsrooms, because you didn't have access to school, you're not a journalist. Just as you're not a civil engineer even if you know how to calculate. You need to study, yes, to at least make fewer mistakes.
This text is the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of H2FOZ.
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