Media racial literacy and anti-indigenous racism: ten years of coverage of conflicts involvingindigenous peoples in television journalism

Abstract

This research analyzes how television news portrays Indigenous peoples in the context of coverage of conflicts involving Indigenous peoples over the last decade. To highlight the ruptures and continuities in journalistic work, a content analysis (Bardin, 2009) of Jornal da Globo, from Rede Globo, will be conducted between 2013 and 2023. Based on the concept of racial literacy (Moreira, 2024) and the tension surrounding the concept of Indigenous people (Bonfil Batalla, 2023), reflections will be presented on the reports shown and how the media contributes to the maintenance of anti-Indigenous racism in the country. During the analyzed period, the term “Indian” was used in most of the news reports (between 2013 and 2020), highlighting the reproduction of colonial imagery and stereotypes linked to Indigenous peoples. The term only ceased to be effectively used by the news program in 2022. The ethnicity of the Indigenous peoples was not effectively reported during the analyzed period.