1 minute read
Separating the self from the story
“It’s diffcult because we [the journalists] are citizens as well. We are citizens and it is very hard to see your country in this situation. It was hard to build a democracy in Brazil. We’ve had more than 20 years in a military dictatorship, so when you see that, it’s diffcult to report. For me personally, it’s not really hard to separate myself and my opinions from my reporting. I believed that I could do this on this day. I could do it in the right way to not mix my personal feelings with this story.”
As power shifts, so does journalism
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“It is impossible to do the same journalism in a democratic government and an autocratic government. The autocratic government used to attack the media all the time. We tried to do the job, but it was impossible. We are not working on the same felds. If you are working in a democratic feld, you can do the work. If you are not, it’s impossible. I would say that as journalists, during the Bolsonaro time, we were more united as a class. We were journalists and we were oppressed. We had to be tougher with the government. The media was pretty tough with Bolsonaro because it was impossible not to be.”
Life after the insurrection
“The atmosphere is different. I would say that we are only now starting to relax a bit. The frst few months of the new government, we were still talking about the previous one. So, I can say that now we are starting to talk about the new government. Things are returning closer to normal and the atmosphere is different. Many people say that they forgot how good it was to live in a normal atmosphere.
“The new problems are beginning to come. We are trying to forget, in impossible ways, what happened and move forward. There are many things to investigate about the past, we cannot forget that. New problems will be coming, and we will have to pay attention to that.
“I understand that it will be impossible to forget what happened, even for those who wish it. The country will still be discussing this attack for a long time to come. It will be present in the public debate for many years. It is part of our life now. A scar on our history.”
