JUSTICE IN THE MEDIA STAGE: THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MENSALÃO JUDGES IN NARRATIVES OF VEJA AND ÉPOCA

Abstract

This work studies an aspect very specific of relationship between media and justice in democracy, that is, how journalism builds, in their narratives, the image of judges, the main actors of justice, in coverage that give high visibility to the judicial universe. As empirical work, we analyze the two main information magazines in Brazil, Veja and Época, built the image of the judges of the Supreme Court during the judgement of the criminal action 470, the popular process of Mensalão. The analysis of the corpus, constituted by 20 publications of magazines,  will be performed by the application of categories of critical discourse analysis, with particular focus on tools formuleted by Theo van Leeuwen and Norman Fairclough. Two main question as conclusion: the tendency of both publications to personalize justice in the figure of some judges and the creation of heroization effects attributed to judges whose decisions met the media expectations for conviction of the accused.