Abstract

Brazil has been one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In part, this is the case because of mis- and disinformation about the coronavirus circulating on social media and spread by elected officials, especially the president, Jair Bolsonaro. In this scenario, journalists in Brazil have had to report on conflicting information coming from the government authorities and make sense of stories, while the virus has continued to spread, infecting and killing hundreds of thousands of people in the country.
Using in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with 10 journalists located in Brasília, Brazil’s capital, who have covered COVID-19, this study examines the lived experiences of these journalists as well as the impacts of mis- and disinformation on their work. A thematic analysis of the interview data shows that journalists have faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 coverage, varying from work-related problems to barriers in accessing information from the government. The results also indicate the government has acted as a source of misinformation, which has increased polarization around COVID-19 and significantly impacted the coverage. Finally, although this thesis didn’t explicitly divide journalists into two groups to compare them, a noticeable trend emerged from the data: political journalists in Brasília tended to assume a strong watchdog role to hold authorities accountable, while science and health reporters tried to depoliticize the coverage, writing stories about the virus developments, precautionary measures and vaccination in order to reach as many people as possible.
This study concludes with remarks on how the main takeaways expressed in the journalist interviews can be used to formulate best practices and to foster more robust journalistic practices in Brazil and beyond.