Marta is OK after a car crash in Brazil on Saturday (Photo Copyright Jeff Kassouf for The Equalizer) SAO PAULO — Five-time world player of the year Marta has sustained minor injuries in a car crash in Brazil The star of Brazil’s women’s football team was taken to a hospital for tests but had only a few bruises and was released after Saturday’s crash in northeastern Brazil Authorities said Marta lost control of the Audi she was driving and crashed hard on the side of the road The GloboEsporte web site said three other people who were in the car also weren’t seriously injured The 28-year-old midfielder reportedly was returning from a friend’s house when the afternoon accident happened in the city of Santana do Ipanema Marta this week will play with Brazil in an international tournament in the capital of Brasilia. 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Léo RamosResearch in the field of communication enjoys little academic prestige in Brazil for 40 years one of the fiercest advocates for its establishment in Brazil the situation is related to the special epistemological difficulties in the area—after all even a century after it was established in the United States that science—which some regard as pseudo-science—has not been able to clearly identify its object communication is not an autonomous field of research it incorporates contributions from other sciences—the physical sciences and the life sciences,” he observes Marques talks about that strange and prolonged identity crisis that afflicts an area of activity that involves no fewer than 25,000 professors and 250,000 students in Brazil and is interwoven with his own professional career Marques de Melo reflects on political circumstances that interfered in his university and personal life and relates some intriguing stories about this Brazilian who made his way from the backlands of Alagoas state to a post at Brazil’s most prestigious university you were head of the Journalism Department of the ECA (School of Communication and Arts) And you were working to establish the field of research in communication in Brazil I’d like you to talk about those beginnings The position was as director of the Journalism Department at the School of Cultural Communication I consider myself to have been very fortunate because I had the opportunity to work with Luiz Beltrão truly the pioneer in scientific research in communications in Brazil When in 1961 he founded the journalism curriculum at the Catholic University of Pernambuco he introduced a new element into the education of journalists in this country—introduction of the dimension of scientific research alongside professional practice Were you already a journalist at that point I began my career in Alagoas at the newspaper Gazeta de Alagoas I was an excellent journalist based in the interior regions covering my city for the newspaper of the state capital which was famous because one of its mayors was the writer Graciliano Ramos although he actually lived in Santana do Ipanema was in partnership with a transportation magnate who owned a bus line that ran between Palmeira dos Índios served by a different train that came from São Francisco For a while he lived in Palmeira dos Índios exactly during the time when my mother was pregnant with me—I’m the oldest of four children to finish answering your question about how I got started in journalism: I covered events in Santana do Ipanema those everyday happenings such as weddings I experienced the conflict between reporting the facts the way the authorities wanted Rui Barbosa’s pamphlet A imprensa e o dever da verdade (The press and the duty of truth) became my bible Did your family oppose your becoming a journalist When I said I wanted to take the college entrance exam for journalism my father said I was looking for trouble and observed that college-level courses in journalism were offered only in São Paulo and in Rio and he couldn’t afford for me to study in southern Brazil I went to Recife to take the entrance exam in engineering as my family wanted But on the day  the results of the exam came out in the newspaper what interested me most was a little item on the side that said that the Catholic University was going to establish a program in journalism There was no question: I left the celebration going on among those who had passed the exam and went over to Catholic University to ask where the journalism courses would be given The gentleman who spoke to me was Professor Luiz Beltrão (1918-1986) For two weeks I studied in the public libraries of Recife to prepare myself for the journalism exam I decided to study both law and journalism the newly-created SUDENE (Superintendency for the Development for the Northeast) was about to hold a competitive examination to hire personnel and then took a six-month intensive course to qualify as an administration official The course was given by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation and focused on two areas: the economy of the Northeast Those who already had a university diploma took the technical course in economic development I had the privilege of being assigned to work in the office of the superintendent arrived at SUDENE at noon and stayed until six You tell a fascinating story related to specialized journalism there I went to work in the public relations and publishing division of SUDENE I had learned the theoretical fundamentals of journalism And for awhile I had been trained in the daily practice of journalism in Recife There I learned about journalism from Milton Coelho da Graça Since I had once been a political activist coming from the JUC (Catholic University Youth) I went to work for then-governor Miguel Arraes I became the chief of staff for Germano Coelho when I was still in the first year of university and only 20 years old Then I went to work for the Popular Culture Movement and was serving as its administrative director when the debacle of 1964 occurred I went back to SUDENE and it is there that the incident that you remembered took place: I found myself assigned to write a report on the economy of the Northeast but then I thought about it and realized that to some extent they were right: it’s impossible to do well in specialized journalism—economic or scientific for example—if you’re not familiar with the subject matter because you have to place yourself between the person who produced the knowledge and someone who doesn’t know much about it After I overcame the problems of being arrested because I had been part of the Arraes administration In those earliest days of the dictatorship anyone who was from the intellectual community was released right away Whenever there was an investigation in Recife I was lucky enough to win “honorable mention” in the Esso Prize competition which made me somewhat well-known in Recife I began a graduate program in journalism that was being given at the Ciespal (International Center for Advanced Studies in Journalism) I arrived in July 1966 and joined the fray I took a test at Editora Abril for a job on its magazine Realidade But a friend suggested that I work in public relations I ended up at Inese (National Institute for Social and Economic Studies) for twice the salary I would have earned at Abril It also happened that I had begun teaching in Pernambuco after Luiz Beltrão accepted an offer from the University of Brasília (UnB) to head their School of Communication He passed his classes in Pernambuco on to me I learned that the University of São Paulo (USP) was establishing the School of Cultural Communications I found out that they were looking for professors so I went to see the director a Spaniard who was full professor of Spanish language and literature He interviewed me and suggested that I sign up for the competitive exam Was there opposition at that time from the USP School of Philosophy and Human Sciences to the creation of the School of Communication The School of Philosophy ought to have accepted this new field of knowledge but there was a group that didn’t want that And so the wife of Chancellor Luís Antonio da Gama e Silva convinced her husband to establish the School of Cultural Communications He formed a committee and called on some professors from the School of Philosophy to serve on it a member of the wing that was favorable to journalism and of a group that was not ideologically radical that included Professors Antonio Candido and Antônio Soares Amora The ones who rejected the idea were primarily conservatives associated with education such as Roque Spencer Maciel de Barros and Laerte Ramos de Carvalho had the concept of communication developed in Brazil The seminars given by Wilbur Schramm and Daniel Lerner organized in 1970 by the UnB with support from the American Embassy were of landmark importance people had already been studying the works of Marshall McLuhan McLuhan didn’t appear in Brazil until 1970 The first to read them were Gilberto Freyre and Luiz Beltrão who had been using the press as a research source which few Brazilians were aware of: The mechanical bride: folklore of industrial man which were considered third-rate materials as a source of studies And Luiz Beltrão read and publicized The Gutenberg galaxy The man who would publicize McLuhan in the South—as northeasterners refer to Brazil south of Rio de Janeiro—was Anísio Teixeira who wrote the preface to [the Portuguese translation of] The Gutenberg galaxy who translated Understanding media: the extensions of Man My going to USP was preceded by the arrival of Cásper Líbero The ECA was just getting started in 1967 when the famous “strike by the leftovers”– students who had passed the college entrance exams but were shut out by a shortage of openings—broke out And so I received an invitation from Líbero who was establishing a chair for communication theory later known as scientific fundamentals of communication It was then that I suggested to the director that he establish a Center for Research in Social Communication You then had a clear notion that you were working toward a new field of research The founder of research in communication in Brazil was Luiz Beltrão When in 1963 he established the Institute of Information Science he immediately began to carry out studies of the various means of communication an elementary scientific work on the reporting of police actions in the Northeastern press Later I did graduate work at Ciespal and was a student of Bruce Westley By then I had already read the works of Wilbur Schramm and Daniel Lerner authors who are of vital importance to the field of communication some notion of the field and the need to expand it I think it is important always to point out that Beltrão made a significant introduction in Recife and then disseminated it throughout Brazil It was he who created the first scientific journal in the area Comunicações e Problemas (Communications and problems) I set up the Cáspar Líbero center and began to conduct a series of research studies that were poorly received in academia Because of prejudice against the subject matter including one that studied the content of comic books All they are is junk…” I formed a group to analyze the Diário de São Paulo since we were studying all the newspapers then in circulation But the research that got the most criticism was about TV soap operas But didn’t  the line of research into TV soap operas soon become a tradition at the ECA I found out that the courses in radio and television covered all sorts of topics the leading export product of our cultural industry By ministerial directive I created a TV Soap Opera Study Unit and approached all the USP foundations to get funding for it three professors were hired to teach journalism: Flávio Galvão who had the job of supervising the two of them because I had a post-graduate degree and could work full-time at USP Until 1972 I worked on establishing the Department of Journalism and Publishing and carried out a series of activities that combined research and professional development because I was discovered by the intelligence services and when the 4th Week of Journalistic Studies ended I was prosecuted under Decree-Law 477 [which dealt with punishments including expulsion of students and dismissal of professors and personnel accused of engaging in subversive activities at the university] The reason for investigating me was a handout that I had written for students in 1968 entitled “Exercises for the lead,” and it had been circulated throughout Brazil I was conducting my journalism classes the way the American professors do: talking about the lead Then came the practical part; the students went to the newspapers to investigate those things One of those classes on the “lead” [the term refers to the opening paragraph of a news item that and why the thing happened that motivated that text] was given on the day after the death of student Edson Luís [the first student killed by the 1964 dictatorship the university restaurant in Rio de Janeiro The subject the students used for the practical part of their work on the lead was the events of that day This material was inserted into the handout The publication was immediately taken out of circulation at the ECA and I was found guilty recommended that I be dismissed and prohibited from teaching in Brazil for five years I mention Reale because he was the authority There was a system set up in the office of the chancellor; security agencies were on site there USP finally found me guilty and sent the case to the Ministry of Education because the minister had to ratify the results Minister Jarbas Passarinho said he would not impose a penalty in this case because he saw that the author was not a terrorist and the decree was intended to combat terrorists but the university authorities would not accept this And so I decided to dedicate myself full time to my doctoral dissertation and became the first PhD in journalism in Brazil That was extremely irritating to the officials at USP and the security services was an agent of the repression and when the members of my panel were selected My advisor had advised me not to react to him Basically he said that I was quoting Marxists and his main complaint was about historian Nelson Werneck Sodré All the members of the panel except Nunes Dias gave me a grade of 10 But the persecution at the university was so severe that I was advised to leave the country I asked FAPESP for a post-doctoral study grant and went to the United States Since post-graduate education was changing in Brazil I decided to observe how post-graduate studies worked there But USP didn’t want to hear anything about it Only later did I learn the circumstances: the commander of the Second Army had sent an order to USP to dismiss the most well-known communists with no right to indemnification and no explanation whatsoever but it was very difficult to do so because the security agencies kept saying that I couldn’t teach The Methodist Church was establishing a school of communications in São Paulo and one of the pastors whom I had met in Recife asked me to work there security agents came to put pressure on the chancellor He had them expelled from the site because it was a house of God where he could choose whoever he wanted to work there His name was Benedito de Paula Bittencourt; he was a member of the Federal Council of Education I promised to bring him both books I had written and assured him that I would resign if he found anything compromising in them Two months later he called me in and said that there was no problem at all but I shouldn’t proselytize in the classroom And so I survived from my work at the Methodist University of São Paulo I put together a teaching staff composed of people who came back from abroad I accepted professors such as Fernando Perrone Soon the post-graduate curriculum at Methodist University won a top rating from the Coordinating Agency for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – Capes I established  the journal Comunicação e Sociedade which was more or less a successor to Beltrão’s journal that had been published from 1967 until But there were other publications in the field The ECA itself had the Revista da Escola de Comunicações Culturais and the newspaper Jornal do Brasil had its Cadernos de Jornalismo How did you reconcile your various places of employment during that phase I published the first research projects done at the Líbero center in the book Comunicação social – Teoría e pesquisa (Social communication – theory and research) which was the first best-seller in the field of communication in Brazil The only reason it didn’t remain in print was that after awhile the empirical part of the research papers became outdated and so I asked the publisher to cease publication I’ve written more than 20 books–I’ve lost count–and have compiled or coordinated about 70 others You’ve been carrying your experience with you from one institution to another I brought from Recife to USP all the experimentation with newspapers that Beltrão had done Here at USP it was possible to have a newspaper laboratory dissecting the existing newspapers and making a recommendations about how to make them better the first task that Morejón assigned me was exactly that—to set up a newspaper laboratory We couldn’t publish anything at other USP institutions because of the censorship Our first practical experiment was the result of a suggestion by Freitas Nobre We held an International Seminar on Research in Radio and Television in May 1968 and invited some celebrities to come and talk about research on the media The only problem was that its timing coincided with May 1968 movement They were on strike and occupying the building UNESCO had invested a lot and Itamaraty had as well that they would have the opportunity to hear alternative opinions and could even set up a news agency And so the first laboratory experiment at the ECA was the university news agency The students covered the seminar and produced a daily bulletin that was provided to the press all over Brazil I established a Center for Research in Journalism to analyze journalism in general The biggest difficulty we had originally was the lack of a full-time teaching staff Journalists didn’t want to dedicate themselves only to teaching and research we started training a generation that was interested in teaching one in layout and another in photojournalism an architect and artist known for his cover designs who came to us from the advertising business He taught the students to approach layout in accordance with the best trends of the era Anyone who looks at the laboratory newspapers from the ECA during those years will see some very beautiful things who graduated in electronic engineering from Poli [Polytechnical School of USP] but was a photographer who was passionate about the cinema He was also owner of the Fototica chain of stores He gave classes in which he ordered the students to start by going to the Pinheiros farmers’ market or some other place and take pictures he gave the theoretical classes—an approach that was very severely criticized at the time I was supposed to sign an affidavit reporting that he hadn’t shown up for work But instead I exhibited a signed time card We had rotated professors so that every day one of them gave a class in his place And that was how we proceeded until Farkas was released He gave the ECA as a gift the “design” for the laboratory that the university purchased and was also assigned to implement that kind of initiative five of us professors in the Journalism Department were stripped of our political rights: Freitas Nobre The last of our professors to be victimized was Vladimir Herzog who had been hired to give classes in telejournalism when he was killed The teaching staff had been changed during the Manuel Nunes Dias administration and if it hadn’t been for the insistence by certain professors who were in favor of the return of those who had been stripped of their rights José Goldemberg was chancellor and he rehired us But since the Diário Oficial had reported only that our contracts had been terminated not indicating that we’d been stripped of our rights I had to start my entire career in terms of seniority and pay grade over again A few years later I regained my salary as full professor I also brought back the “journalism weeks.” The first one was about Marx and journalism I remember that during the first Journalism Week we had discussed sensationalism and there was a lot of uneasiness involved in tackling that subject at USP an editor of Notícias Populares who dramatized news reports on the radio But we also brought in Alberto Dines and an as yet unknown Friar Evaristo who was working in the Prison Ministry at São Paulo’s Carandiru penitentiary they were going to talk about yellow journalism from the ethical standpoint and all the invited speakers had arrived except the friar but from the audience the monk raised his hand and introduced himself as Paulo Evaristo Arns Two months later he was appointed archbishop and cardinal It was after this “week” that the Jornal do Campus began to circulate for the first time And the Jornal do Campus continued until when Until it published an article entitled “The maharajahs of USP.” Bernardo Kucinski had taken over as editor-in-chief and discovered that some personnel were receiving two salaries He published the names and caused a huge uproar They called me into the chancellor’s office and notified me that they were cancelling the subsidy for that newspaper The university established the Jornal da USP to replace it I actually took their side because I was head of the department and had to defend the freedom of the press I know that if we had checked further we would have found out that the double salary was not illegal Everyone who had been giving classes during a single shift and started giving them at night had their salaries doubled When did you go back to the Methodist University I received an invitation to establish the UNESCO Chair in Communication in Brazil The Methodist University had already invited me to establish the doctoral program And so I went back to establish the doctoral program in communications and took on the UNESCO project as well What conclusions can you draw about research in communication in today’s Brazil This is a field that has grown a lot; in 2013 we will celebrate our 50th anniversary and Brazil now ranks second in number of research projects—only the United States is ahead of us We have a significant presence at international conferences we rank second in the number of papers selected for the leading international event in our field the International Association of Media and Communication Research but Brazilian research has not been able to take off in terms of leadership The first reason is that we lack intellectual self-esteem The field does not yet have its own identity We are working with objects that are increasingly closer to giving us an identity And there are only a few Brazilian researchers who are concerned about this situation—Muniz Sodré and Maria Immacolata Vassalo Lopes Communication is not an autonomous field of research it incorporates contributions from other sciences—the physical sciences and the life sciences who would argue that the object of that science There are various theories about that and I believe that the object is a little broader than the mere relationship the field has two divisions: interpersonal communications which has a basically journalistic tradition and then expands into advertising and public relations the field is bifurcated: you have the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the National Communication Association Is the effort that groups like the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) are making to coordinate communication and culture also a search for an identity We have various ways to create an identity other than based on the object Cultural studies are attempting to disengage themselves from the mass communication object in search of something that’s a bit nobler But does the poor self-esteem that you attribute to the researchers in communication stem from this doubt about the object I think it comes from insufficient academic recognition My diagnosis is that communication continues to be the poor cousin of the humanities and social sciences as applied here in Brazil because we always find one association challenging the other’s qualifications fighting for resources for the entire field rather than for only segments of it I think the problem is more taxonomic than theoretical There hasn’t been much progress in Brazil in communication theory Several post-graduate programs have had trouble surviving because of low Capes scores That problem has not yet been resolved; in fact the field of communications doesn’t even have an international interface to assume a position of national leadership as a counterpoint to the two biggest research centers The personnel from Bahia are very reputable but they lack the historical comprehension that would help them deal with the problem The ECA and the ECO (School of Communications) were schools that trained almost the entire generation of researchers in communication who are now active in this country they lost the characteristics that satisfy the requirements set by the research-sponsoring agencies I began an effort to decentralize the post-graduate courses We reduced the number in order to become more selective We sought to subdivide the post-graduate curriculum into several programs Now the plan that we established in the early 1990s is beginning to make a comeback We had implemented post-graduate courses in cinema the fine arts and music were and still are separate projects Only a reorganization along those lines can succeed because communication is everything; it’s not nothing Other than those Brazilians whom you’ve already mentioned during this interview who are your favorite theoreticians in communication I don’t know that I can talk about preferences because I have always sought to be philosophically independent My favorite authors over all those years have been Raymond Nixon and Fernand Terrou Some colleagues of my generation with whom I felt a great affinity were Herbert Schiller and George Gerbner I am quite averse to the cult of personalities I think Barbero is a very valuable researcher but worshipped to such an extent that even he doesn’t feel comfortable about it I have promoted a series of seminars intended to increase the impact of Latin American thought who is the father of national policies on communication Eliseo Verón…I have brought in all these people because I think the younger generation needs to become familiar with the different trends in the field What kind of relationship is there between your views of communication in general and the field of scientific journalism Communication makes sense only when it serves to build something Journalism is essential in order for us to understand what is happening in the contemporary world and what is occurring around human beings Scientific journalism in particular is a vital field because it is an area in which knowledge is democratized It is where journalism stands as a form of knowledge What has been your greatest contribution to the field of communications in Brazil That to which I have been dedicating my efforts for almost 50 years I have a proposal for classifying the genres in this country into five categories: informative they call “literary journalism.” We live in a society in which hedonism predominates and journalists would rather write the kind of story that is more attractive to the ordinary reader something that doesn’t just recount the events of the day hence the “entertaining journalism.” My oldest writing in this regard is the thesis I wrote at USP in order to get my livre-docência [teaching] degree It was initially published as Opinião no jornalismo brasileiro (Opinion in Brazilian journalims) as Jornalismo opinativo (Opinionative journalism).In it I’ve done only 30% of it and would need to stop now in order to research the subject I want to start with Hipólito da Costa and continue up to what journalism is today I want to move from the press of the 19th century bears the burden of an ambition to be the great history of journalism in Brazil When I delivered my proposal for full-time work at USP I submitted a project on the development of journalism in Brazil I was already talking about the reasons why the press has lagged behind in Brazil © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved.