What do Globo’s and EBC’s internal rules and editorial guidelines say about journalistic transparency?

Abstract

Brazilian journalists and news organizations are historically resistant to transparency, which hides the conditions of news production and prevents citizens from knowing the logic, interests and idiosyncrasies. Despite this, transparency appears superficially in professional discourse. In this article, we analyze internal rules and editorial guidelines of two communication conglomerates in Brazil: Grupo Globo and Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC). These public documents make it possible to see if there are internal policies of transparency and media accountability and how they are practiced. The corpus of analysis is formed by the Editorial Principles of Grupo Globo and by EBC documents on journalistic guidelines, corporate governance, management and ethical conduct. The texts make up a collection of the social representations of these media conglomerates and allow us to see the obstacles to the implementation of more transparency in journalistic practices.