To give up on journalism, the concessions must change

I do not take the internet seriously, now. Before, public communication space was mediated by ethics or the lack of it. It was the “beam” model of broadcasters. Whatever the case, there was an experienced journalist who calculated the impact of the news on the company and on the reporter.

Two perspectives occur to me. In the first, artificial intelligence can do data collection, processing and presentation. The weather presenter’s figure can be superseded by apps, as can the writing of short items. A well-taught robot writes well from press releases.

Then, that journalism’s funeral will have to wait for a change in legislation. According to IBGE, 87.9% of Brazilian households have radio and 93% have television (in Portuguese). Although advertising revenue has decreased significantly, a Brazilian TV network leads the market, ahead of Facebook and Google.

Obligations in the text

It is common for the media-company boss to proclaim how terrible the present times are, since day one of the business. Now, if professional news production in 2021 is contemptible, let us reorganize the concessions. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

In the 1983 decree, from the last president of the dictatorship, João Figueiredo (the one who preferred the smell of horses to the smell of the people): “do not broadcast programs that offend public sentiment, exposing people to situations that, in some way, result in embarrassment.” (Our translation.)

As the line goes, no one in the world, not even the pope, can answer without blinking: are journalists more capable than advertisers and data analysts of cleaning up the dirt of the bubbles?