Criminologia midiática e a necessidade de superar o paradigma do direito comercial vigente

Abstract

The social influence of media is a recurring theme across multiple knowledge sectors. From a criminological perspective, its notoriety is such that it has been materialized by Raúl Zaffaroni in a true parallel source of knowledge: media criminology, consolidated as the media speech capable of influencing the construction of social thinking about crime. However, while critical criminology, based on the principle of the ultima ratio and the purpose of containing punitive power, is restricted to university corridors – far removed from the citizen – media criminology prevails in the external sphere, fostering a subjective adherence to barbarism: a growing collective demand for punishment. The intention is not to attribute the punitive culture, historically rooted in Brazilian society, to the media, but to demonstrate that this logic continues to expand when criminal events are broadcast in the current way, thus necessitating a change in the paradigm that currently governs the media: the commercial law. There is an inversion of values: despite the right to information, the journalistic agenda is produced according to private interests, in convergence with linked financial institutions – no investor pays to hear what they do not want. Being the publication of news instrumentalized for audience and profit, so will be the characters in the case, as long as there are no limits. For example, coverage of a murder is capable of overriding: (i) the victim’s dignity, by displaying her body on the ground; (ii) the private life of her mother, harassed to provide an interview, even though she was in tears; (iii) the presumption of innocence, contradiction, image and honor of the exposed suspect, who will be immediately condemned by public opinion. Although the media plays a role that is specific to the agencies of the criminal justice system, it does not offer the same procedural guarantees when it comes to broadcasting crimes. Since freedom of the press is a constitutional guarantee, according to art. 220 of the Federal Constitution (CF), which prohibits any form of censorship, any changes that may affect its regulation must also be based on norms that occupy the same level in the Kelsenian pyramid, such as human rights (art. 5º, CF). Thus, it is advocated to overcome the paradigm of commercial law, which currently governs media coverage, in order to protect those involved in the crimes broadcast.