Fact vs. Text: How “Objectivity” Hides the Discursive Characteristic of Journalism

• Autor(a) principal: Messagi Júnior, Mário
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Bakhtiniana
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/bakhtiniana/article/view/49210
• topic: Objetividade jornalística; Dialogia; Gêneros do discurso; História do jornalismo; Journalistic Objectivity; Dialogism; Speech Genres; History of Journalism

The concept of journalistic objectivity is grounded on the notion of “fact,” that means that journalism describes the world out there, like the natural sciences. Throughout the history of journalism, “fact” and “objectivity” have been central concepts for social affirmation and the elaboration of professional procedures. However, journalism does not focus on facts, except for a tiny part of its activity, but on texts, on discourses. It does not report the world; reports sources, reports other people’s information or texts. It is, therefore, fundamentally a discursive activity. This article criticizes the notion of “fact” in journalism and shows by means of analyses of texts from the UOL portal, how journalism is mainly language about language, and not language about the world. Thus, concepts from traditional positivism, from the subject and object dichotomy, do not apply to it. The discursive perspective is much more pertinent.