Paradigm Shift in Mid-Twentieth Century Brazilian Journalism: A Negative Dialectics of Decoloniality?

ABSTRACT

Examining the trajectory of Brazilian journalism and its academic mediations during the period 1945–1964, this article provides elements to identify what we would call the negative dialectics of intellectual colonialism. In the Brazilian press, the replacement of the French paradigm by the North American one was seen by many as progress, without speculation about the possibility of cultivating a native formula. Associated with the institutional modernization triggered by the 1930 Revolution, the model of news production imported from the United States was softly assimilated instead of being imposed on professionals. There was a “passive revolution”. Rather than resisting new foreign influences, most of Brazil’s first generation of professional journalists and academics exploited for their own benefit the opportunities that, not by chance, emerged from the situation created by the context of the Second World War. On the other hand, the modernization of the press, paradoxically, had no significant impact on professional training within journalism schools, which arose in Brazil as an annex to the faculties of philosophy verified at that time and, therefore, out of step with the pedagogical pragmatism and practical teaching that characterized academically journalism in the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazilian press
• Journalism theory
• Newspaper history
• Journalism education
• United States
• France

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CAPES, CNPQ.