Narrative domain: the journalistic field and drug coverage
journalistic field; news values criteria; news construction; journalistic source; drugs
This research aims to analyze how internal disputes in the journalistic field in Pernambuco impact the construction of news about drugs. To achieve this, the portals JC Online, Diario de Pernambuco, and Folha de Pernambuco were examined using the theoretical and methodological approach of discourse analysis. Subsequently, we analysed semi-structured interviews with key figures in the journalistic field, such as reporters and editors from the studied newspapers, as well as press officers from the civil and military police of the State. The investigation was based on theoretical concepts such as social field, cultural capital, and cultural arbitrary by Pierre Bourdieu; news values criteria and analyses of journalism theories by Nelson Traquina; discourse analysis theorists such as Eni Orlandi, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Jacques Courtine, and the characteristics of opinion-introducing verbs studied by Luiz Antônio Marcuschi for the study of newspaper narratives. The research aimed to identify social, organizational, and individual criteria to examine the construction of news about drugs in the studied newspapers. The findings indicate that news about drugs are constructed based on disputes in other social fields that affect the journalistic field, producing symbolic violence through the silencing of sectors that do not have a narrative space to express opinions on drug prohibitionism and anti-prohibitionism.