Talking to Everyone is a Journalist's Education

Facing the elected president, whoever they may be, in two weeks, we will have overcome one of the "excuses" for procrastinating perhaps the most important journalistic practice: talking to absolutely everyone who crosses our path. The way the country is divided – which doesn't apply to Paraná, given the governor's reelection and the anti-Workers' Party vote for president – we easily fall into the fallacy that it's better to leave that controversial subject for later, for after this, for beyond that.

We, journalists, may have indulged in elitist choices. When the word "elite" emerges in scientific articles on political communication, a little demon whispers in our gatekeeper ears: "You've made it in life, you've earned it, you're elite". Not necessarily is the demon wrong; it frequently tells us things more reasonable than a psychiatrist. Becoming or being elite, however, would confer upon us an inflexible role, more like Queen Elizabeth than Winston Churchill. Anyway, who's going to talk to those who don't enter the palace?

During elections, disaster coverage, carnivals, and all sorts of falsely urgent matters, we are tempted or coerced into sacrificing anthropological work, investigation, asking "how does what you're telling me happen?".

The lead questions, the famous "who, what, when, where, why, and how", can be answered by well-trained artificial intelligence. Some newsroom activities are so mechanized that advanced websites have replaced reporters with robots – which I think is great. Properly applied, Newsmaking theory can account for this change. But this doesn't address the need for recognition and participation from the people who read or watch us. The public stage we strive to maintain doesn't have legs other than ours, ears and intelligence other than ours.

The first task to be completed after the elections, however you like, is to visit everyone, everyone, those uncles from the family WhatsApp group, unbearable online and lovely as Saint Mary in person. We need to answer their calls, let them explain why they believe the Supreme Federal Court is working to destroy lives, why they believe that tiny little plot seventeen blocks from the beach is going to be "invaded" by the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), but mainly, why they no longer believe what you and I write, record, or present. And when they tell us it's because "the media is all bought", we'll ask: "Don't be upset, uncle, but how does that happen?"

Let me write a little in the solemn tone of the Bible.

Children, do not worship the lack of time. This is characteristic of professions less important and less prestigious than yours. Never answer "Today, I can't go to Basset Burgers with my friends' friends", and never avoid hearing the same story for the fiftieth time. If a story endures fifty repetitions, it must be good. It is abominable, in any case, that professional success ends in unavailability to go to university, to art exhibitions, or to sit in a different circle where one is not the owner of the truth. End of biblical challenge. That's where it gets complicated, sitting in a different circle where one is not the owner of the truth, because, to some extent, we are obliged to broaden our frames of reference. And this would make us lose our role as "judge of the news". We must recognize the little Sergio Moro who lives within each of us, to prevent him from overreaching, to prevent him from feeding and carrying out Operation Car Wash 2. We must strictly forbid ourselves from devouring the State. In the end, the WhatsApp uncle and we journalists have at least this in common: we don't like to feel cheated or underestimated.

When I refer to journalists, I'm writing about the group I consider my professional community. I write, through sober testimony, from within myself. Because I could only criticize in the "other" (to be a little Habermasian) what I was aware of being criticizable, or, furthermore, my criticism could stem from my personal flaws. Or various other variations. But with or without self-criticism, without or with the best way to communicate to our peers that these criticisms are a bitter medicine for our professional future, we are on the same news Titanic.

In the there and then of the past, it was said to each generation of reporters: "A reporter's place is on the street". The idea was that the news was where there was life, where there were buses and poles disrupting the lives of taxpayers, in the crowds of political or union demonstrations. We go out to write about a summer camp and come back covered in mud, playing flood survivor. How great is this profession!

In the here and now, I reinforce: a reporter's place is on all streets, in any space that can be entered. Why did the dog enter the church? Because the door was open. Wherever there are people, wherever there are conversations about difficulty sleeping, about cholesterol levels, wherever they are talking about watercolor painting, about the influence of sea wave measurements on the formation of shells, right there where the "extremes" are (lovely as Saint Mary), in academic discussion, on the internet, of course, at family parties, there must be a journalist who is interested in human life. If a presenter can resolve a family quarrel, they can handle anything on air.

This text is an invitation to one of the foundations of journalistic training, to interpersonal relationships. It is by listening without prejudice that we rearrange the kaleidoscope of the world, that we feel that fresh, perfumed air of what is new, that we free ourselves from bubbles that smell like cages. It is among peers that we test the ideas in our heads, encounter the first resistance or clear opposition, and mature what is not mature enough.