Jornalismo e meio ambiente na Amazônia: a cobertura de eventos ambientais extremos pela imprensa escrita de Manaus

Abstract

This multidisciplinary research starts from these premises and has as objective the press coverage of the droughts taken place in Amazonas from 2005 to 2010. The question that guided this investigation was: Was the Amazon written Press able to efficiently inform its public about the drought phenomenona and its implications? To answer that question it was necessary to use methodological tools and theoretical structures of various areas of Social Sciences like Communication, Journalism, Sociology, Political Sciences among others. As a general goal, we had the analysis of the scientific and environmental information quality passed through Diario do Amazonas and A Crítica newspapers during the press coverage of both extreme climatic events. The methodology used was the quantitative and qualitative. In the quantitative area, it was used the content analysis since it is used to detect tendencies and criteria analysis models of noticing, framing and scheduling. The method consisted of the collecting and analysis, based on the fixed categories taking into account the journalistic principles and environmental issues approach of journalistic texts that deal with the droughts taken place in Amazonas. In the qualitative area, interviews were used with the intent of broaden out the analytical image beyond the message (news) focusing the communication process in a broader way, including source studies, the messengers (journalists) and receptors (readers). Joining the content analysis results and the information obtained from the interviews, we are able to infer the lack of quality information received by the readers from both main newspapers in Manaus, having as ground the journalistic principles and its scientific and environmental types. The investigation also pointed out the small contribution of the journalistic droughts coverage in Amazonas in 2005 and 2010 to the decision taking cleared up by the citizens of the main Amazon capital over the issues regarding global climatic changes. We identified the fragilities of the coverage and proposed ways to meet the requirements of the informative content regarding the environmental issues and its consequences in the Amazon.