Journalism and the construction of truth in the field of the economy: An analysis in the light of Bakhtin’s and Foucault’s reflections on discourses

Abstract

This article tries to articulate the construction of truth in the field of the economy and the journalistic discourses about this area. The question that instigates it is this: How do the news reports help to construct a “reality” related to the economy? It starts from the premise that economic news reports are guided mainly by prognoses and not only by stories about present events. Thus they often anticipate situations and cause changes in the market. The corpus of analysis is constituted by issues of the newspapers, O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo of July 1994, the month of the beginning of the “Real Plan”, which has been in force for 12 years. On the basis of the reflections about the issue of communication and discourse by Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault as well as other authors, the author analyzes some aspects of the journalistic coverage of the economy.

Key words: communication and power, economic journalism, Real Plan.