Journalism and enlightenment: an everyday effort of suspension

Abstract

Journalism and enlightenment: an everyday effort of suspension. This article points out the dilemma within journalism’s ideal of enlightenment faced with the main conditons of production and with the process of taking the facts in a “natural” way, just like it happens in the evereyday life structure, which confounds phenomenon and process. Taking journalistic practice as a form of knowledge, the author focuses on the everyday life, in Lukács’ ontological perspective and in his concept of suspension, which is the condition for enlinghtenment. So, it is in the permanent tension between the ideal of journalism and its practices that one can foresee some perspective of change. The author argues that, if enlightenment presumes a critical regard to the facts, and if journalism is necessarily concerned to everyday life, journalism must do an everyday effort of suspension to reach its ideal.