Journalism, memory, forgetting: the Realengo massacre in the Veja magazine’s retrospective insight Leandro Rodrigues

Résumé

This paper discusses the tensions between memory and forgetting, which are commonly found in journalistic narratives. The goal is to understand, in the light of the concepts of “duty of memory” and “abuse of forgetting”, as delineated by Ricoeur, the contradictions evidenced by the work with memory as carried out by journalists. For that purpose, Veja Magazine’s coverage of the Realengo Massacre episode is used as a reference, as it unfolded in two issues of the magazine: December 28, 2011, when the magazine presented the 2011 Retrospective, and dedicated a report to the tragedy that took place in Rio de Janeiro; and January 4, 2012, when Veja published the letter written by a teacher who had witnessed the bloodbath and criticized Veja’s memory/forgetting thus stressing that journalistic work of memory. Ultimately, journalism is approached as a mediating sphere of memory and is therefore subject to the dilemmas of reminiscence concerning the organization of memory in face of the texture of the events experience.