If 2016 was the post-truth year, 2017 will be the year of transparency for Brazilian journalism. More than a prediction, it’s a necessity for professionals and publications that want to reaffirm a contract of confidence with the public.
The good news is that there’s room to mend our relationships with readers, viewers, listeners, and Internet users, and the way to do that is to be honest and attentive to the public. This is one of the many lessons learned from the 13 contributors to the project O jornalismo no Brasil em 2017 (Journalism in Brazil in 2017), a series of texts inspired by Nieman Lab’s annual Predictions For Journalism series. It was a joint project of Farol Jornalismo, which is dedicated to the research of trends in journalism, and the Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo (Abraji), the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism],
O jornalismo no Brasil em 2017 provides insights into the present and the near future of the complex and exciting journalistic scene in the largest country in Latin America. For this piece, we’ve selected some highlights of the project, from seven of the 13 predictions that were published.
As in the U.S., we in Brazil are experiencing increasing polarization via social networks. If there the situation seems to have exploded with the election of Donald Trump, here it had a climax during recent developments in the political crisis that has affected the country for over two years. After the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, we went through an impeachment process for President Dilma Rousseff and municipal elections. The result: In 2016, the number of Facebook shares of fake news about Lava Jato (Car Wash) — an operation responsible for scrutinizing corrupt relationships, especially involving politicians and large corporations, often compared to the Clean Hands Italian operation of the 1990s — was larger than the number of shares of true news.
In O jornalismo no Brasil em 2017, Tai Nalon, the director of Aos Fatos, a pioneering Brazilian fact-checking initiative, draws attention to the need to verify content. For her, next year, social networks should become a place where news should be checked, not just spread. This, says Nalon, will work to prepare us for the 2018 presidential elections in the country.
Although it is essential, fact-checking has its limitations. Total objectivity is unreachable, writes Rogerio Christofoletti, professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and coordinator of the Observatório da Ética Jornalística (ObjETHOS, or Journalistic Ethics Observatory). Hence the importance of transparency as an essential part of journalistic ethics. He recalls cases in which the Brazilian audience demanded that old journalistic pacts were kept when media vehicles tried to get closer to the public by mistakenly appropriating languages and attitudes that are typical of social networks.
It is necessary to leave this arrogant and paternalistic attitude behind, since readers often no longer depend on conventional journalism for information. “Nowadays, it is expected for individuals and organizations to be accountable and to give explanations. Journalism does not exist outside of the society and can not deviate from this requirement,” he writes.
Openness and transparency can help journalism reaffirm its value with the audience, creating the conditions to leverage new business models. That’s what Pedro Burgos, a Brazilian journalist who is part of The Marshall Project team, writes. Like Nalon, Burgos used the post-Trump situation to propose reflection on what we can learn from the latest developments in U.S. media. Besides the increase in subscriptions that traditional vehicles such as The New York Times have had after the election, he notes that nonprofit initiatives are receiving more investment. This creates an opportunity, he says, for journalists to develop strategies that can show the public the value of our work — something that has already been demonstrated by Stanford economist James T. Hamilton in Democracy’s Detectives.
The economist Frederic Kachar, Globo’s general director of print media, bets on reinventing the relationship with the public as a way of recovering from declining revenue. “Having impressive numbers and pageviews is not enough — it’s necessary to have a qualified audience that sees enough value in good journalism to pay for it,” he writes, mentioning the creation of a new way of working that would be capable of delivering good journalism 24/7. It is necessary to invest in the “essence of professional journalism.”
In this new way of working, sending a professional to cover a story with a camera to take a single photo is an outdated practice, predicts the documentary maker João Wainer. The definition of 4K video cameras allows the extraction of frames and their publication with excellent quality, both on paper and on the internet. “It’s the end of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment,’ but whoever confuses it with the end of photography is wrong,” writes the documentary maker, highlighting the new role to be played by the photo editor and the importance of the “specialized look that will once again make a difference.”
The question is how to put all these innovations into practice in Brazil. When writing about national investigative journalism in 2017, Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reporter Rubens Valente predicts that high-quality journalism — the type of work that can differentiate itself from the content on social networks and make a difference — will face structural challenges. Getting smaller and smaller and still steadily reducing staff, traditional newsrooms find it difficult to invest in surprising themes and approaches, as they need to focus all their efforts on the huge amount of day-to-day news.
In parallel with the situation of legacy media, Brazilian journalism has seen a considerable increase in the number of new journalistic initiatives over the last two years. While on one hand this has oxygenated Brazilian journalism with specialized coverage, often offering points of view different from the traditional media’s, it has also brought professional instability and the risk of journalists losing their credibility, their greatest asset, in favor of the causes to which they dedicate their work.
This is the prediction of the journalist Sérgio Lüdtke, author of research on Brazilian digital journalistic enterprises. He says that in order to mitigate these two threats, more planning must be on the horizon of journalistic entrepreneurship in Brazil in 2017. When creating a business plan, entrepreneurs in the journalistic market will have better chances to answer questions that are essential to the survival of their product, both financially and in relation to the transparency pact mentioned by Christofoletti.
Moreno Cruz Osório is cofounder of Farol Jornalismo.
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
David Weigel A test for online speech
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising