Jornalismo de soluções e a cobertura ambiental

: o caso do grupo COFINA

Abstract

Environmental issues and climate change play an increasingly prominent role inmedia coverage, revealing the specific characteristics of covering these subjects. Due to that, environmental specialised journalism has encountered obstacles caused by a traditional view of journalism and concepts such as objectivity. The concept of solutions journalism has been gaining popularity in newsrooms and among journalists in countries like the United States of America, as a way to address some of the challenges traditional journalism has been facing. Environmental coverage is a subject where journalistic criteria of negativity is present, resulting in a disengaged audience, overwhelmed with compassion fatigue. Solutions journalism is a way of responding by providing tools to fight these problems and making audiences more engaged. This internship report sets out to analyse how this concept is viewed in Portuguese media, using the Sábado newsmagazine as an object of study. In this report, exploratory interviews were done with the directors of both Sábado newsmagazine and Correio da Manhã newspaper, as well as in-depth interviews with editors and journalists who cover environmental news. The analysis of these interviews revealed the different perspectives and ideas journalists and editors have about solutions journalism, specifically how there is still some objection to this concept, and instead, an adherence to the traditional roles of journalists. This study also demonstrated a different perception by the editors and journalists regarding the importance of environmental news, and the use of negativity and conflict as criteria for news selection.

Date of Award	22 Jun 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Jessica Roberts (Supervisor)