Pródigo em decisões contra o interesse público: imagem pública, agendamento e enquadramento do Congresso Nacional nos editoriais dos Jornais o Estado de S. Paulo e Folha de S. Paulo

Abstract

Although diverse factors influence the shape of the public image of political actors and institutions, Journalism occupies a privileged role in this process. In respect to the editorial gender, newspapers put themselves in the discussion arena, defending their viewpoint and certain policies. Political agents, on the other hand, are aware of the coverage’s influence. They know how important it is to be supported or rejected in editorials and how much it can help or jeopardize their reelections plans, for example. Thus, this work aims to analyze which public image of the Brazilian Congress is shaped in the editorials of two newspapers, O Estado de S. Paulo and Folha de S. Paulo, identifying themes, characters and frames presented in their coverage. Besides, we also want to investigate the image that these newspapers shape to themselves in their editorials and identify the role they believe to play in the society. The corpus is composed by 164 editorials that mention the Congress, the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate, published by both newspapers, between 2011 and 2013. We use Content Analysis as methodology. This method provides support to identify the most frequently presented themes in the coverage, the most mentioned characters and the frames used to characterize the Brazilian Congress. Results point that both newspapers’ coverages regarding the referred institution are mostly composed of criticism. Most editorials dedicate themselves to Politics and the most frequent frame is conflicts between government and allies in the Congress and between government and Congress in general. Congressional representatives are characterized as self-interested and devoid of concerns with public spending. Other political agents and institutions are also characterized in a negative way, such as Executive institutions and, to a smaller extent, those of the Judicial power. To a certain extent, it is possible speak of an anti-political bias in the coverage, especially considering that the journalistic field legitimizes itself to the audience when it appears as supervisor of the political field. Despite the coverage’s tone of criticism, newspapers recognize the importance of the Congress to democracies. Criticism can actually contribute to make the political sphere more responsive, but we cannot forget that the interests of the journalistic institutions are at stake in editorials, generating tensions between public and private interests.