1. Historicism
Since Pre-History, the press, as a communication mechanism, has had an undeniable presence in communities, both in traditional and modern civilization. With the invention of the mobile printing press, by Johannes Gutenberg, in the XV Century, the press sought to massify itself at the level of a galaxy. In Africa and Asia, the modern press and journalism emerged as a result of the presence of Portuguese colonization, basically as an instrument of information and colonial coercion. In Mozambique, the press finds in João Albasini and his brother, José Albasini, the pioneers of its development. João Albasini founded
O Africano [The African] and
O Brado Africano [The African Cry]
newspapers . In Angola, journalism starts with the publication of the Official Bulletin, in 1845. Adolfo Pina is the founder of
A Província de Angola [The Province of Angola]
newspaper, the first daily published in Portuguese-speaking African countries
; in Guinea-Bissau, the emergence of the press is closely linked to the installation of a printing press in Bolama, in 1879, later called the National Press of Guinea-Bissau. This is how the first group of Guinean typographers was established. Domingos Badinca, taken as the national hero, will be the image of the creation of the Guinean press, whose first publication took place on October 31, 1883, called
Fraternidade [Fraternity]. The publication aimed at raising awareness of the collection of funds to help the victims of the drought in Cabo Verde
| [13] | Lopes, A. S. (2015). The Media in Guinea-Bissau. 1st ed. S/L.: Corubal Editions. [in Portuguese]. |
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. According to the considerations of Pires Laranjeira
, Cabo Verde was the first Portuguese-speaking country to receive Gutenberg’s invention and from it, the first Official Bulletin was printed, in 1842. In 1877, the first official newspaper called
Independente [Independent] was published on Santiago Island; in São Tomé e Príncipe, the press came out through the publication, on October 3, 1857, of the
Boletim Oficial do Governo da Província de São Tomé e Príncipe, [Official Bulletin of the Government of the Province of São Tomé and Príncipe] performing the legislative function and disseminating information and executive orders. In 1869, the first independent newspaper was published, with the title
Semanário Agrícola, Comercial e Científico [Agricultural, Commercial and Scientific Weekly]. The native press, however, emerged around 1911, with the publication of the newspapers Folha de Anúncios [An-nouncement Sheet], A Verdade [The Truth], A Liberdade [Freedom] and O Combate [The Fight]
| [6] | Fonseca, I. de A. (2014). The Press and the Colonial Empire in São Tomé and Príncipe (1857-1974). In Public Communication, Vol. 9, No. 16. Available at: https://journals.openedition.org/cp/842?lang=en Accessed 23 Jan. 2025. [in Portuguese]. |
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. As noted, the press emerges with a futuristic mission and vocation, counteracting the realities of foreign colonial domination. In other words, the main mission was to publish the uneasiness of the communities in the face of the problems of colonization, a kind of demand for the fulfillment of a promise and a crossing to the territory of the future of independence and individual and collective freedoms.
In the early years of independence, the
propaganda press continued to cling to the festival of victory, announcing the heroic deeds of the warriors who had just returned from the trenches. Today, in a reality in which new values have taken shape that have reframed discourses, ways of life, and the relationship with public and private institutions, the media is a means of disseminating the foundations of democracy and the liberalization of public policies, through collective and individual programs. It is also often used as a means of throwing the strand of internal and external wars, publicizing the wanderings of refugees, the limits of poverty, corruption and greed. With the rise of fake news, biting news and social media, the role of the press subverts its historical vocation. Such situations constitute a defeat of the great projects of nation-societies, an erosion of collective identities and standards of life. Since 2022, we have been witnessing the role of the press in the war between Russia and Ukraine
| [9] | JC-Mapera, M. (2022). The Crises of Sentiment and Symbolic Violence in Contemporary Times. In S. Idalina & S. Urbano (Eds.), Culture and the Sensitive. Covilhã: LabCom / Praxis. [in Portuguese]. |
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, reporting events in the operational theater, and making cogitations, premonitions, and instigations of acts that are on the planet below morality and reason.
In the Middle East, there has been a resurgence of conflict in the Gaza Strip. On October 7, 2023, the terrorist group Hamas launched a vigorous attack against Israelis, massacring more than twelve hundred men, women and children, and carrying out the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, a period in which millions of Jews were slaughtered in World War II. These deaths provoked the assault on Gaza, resulting in the deaths of 41,500 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children including hundreds of babies, all of them defenseless
| [19] | Savana (2024, October 11). “A Year of Carnage in the Middle East.” Savana Newspaper. Maputo, p. 28D [in Portuguese]. |
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.
Essentially, this text analyzes the way the press reports the tensest moments in people’s lives, considering that journalism is a “mission”
| [7] | Henriques, R. P. (2014). Language, Truth and Knowledge: An Epistemological Analysis of Journalism from Two Semiotic Perspectives. Vitória, Espírito Santos, Brazil: EDUFES. [in Portuguese]. |
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and a “promise”
| [14] | Martins, M. L. de (2014). Preface: The Triumph of Journalism as Knowledge and as a Profession. In R. P. Henriques (Ed.), Language, Truth and Knowledge: An Epistemological Analysis of Journalism from Two Semiotic Perspective. Vitória, Espírito Santos, Brazil: EDUFES. [in Portuguese]. |
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in the period of the elections held in Mozambique, on October 9, 2024, with regard to the movement of candidates and political forces, as well as with regard to the behavior of society in the face of the scenario experienced after the disclosure of the results by the guardianship bodies.
2. Democracy, Means of Diffusion and Eschatological Iconography
The anthology called
Mensagem – Boletim da casa dos Estudantes do Império [Message – Bulletin of the House of Students of the Empire] (1996), from the collection for the History of African Literatures of Portuguese “Expression”, allows us to understand the “mission” of the press, for a long time. The overseas students reported, from their publications, the pretentious desire to defend their interests, on the one hand, and to foster the exchange between themselves and their metropolitan colleagues, on the other. However, this interest was, in a way, an adoption, insofar as the main objective of the CEI (House of Imperial Students) bulletin was of a propagandistic, “apolitical and areligious nature”
| [15] | Monteiro, C. (1996). Opening Word. In Message – Bulletin of House of Imperial Students (Vol. 2). Lousã: ALAC – Africa, Literature, Art and Culture. [in Portuguese]. |
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of the Portuguese overseas provinces. It is no coincidence that the great figures of the liberation wars in Portuguese Africa came from this association of intellectuals, many of whom published texts with a literary bent in the bulletin of the House of Imperial Students. Agostinho Neto stands out, with the texts “
Quitandeira”, “
Kelipetamena”, “
Certeza”; Mário Pinto de Andrade, with the text “
Jonga”. Other figures who were not known were Aristides Maria Pereira and Amílcar Cabral, who founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde; under the pseudonym
Kalungano, Marcelino dos Santos, an icon of the foundation of the Mozambique Liberation Front, published his poetic text, denouncing colonization and extolling African freedom.
If the anti-democratic obsession and the fear of un-ethics – apprehensions of desolation and unrest – reached, in the last decade that followed the General Peace Agreement in Mozambique, a number of voters probably much larger than at the beginning (1994 to 2009), and this was due not only to the precocity of the democratic system, but also, and perhaps above all, to the precocity of the democratic system, to the emergence of a wave of electronic newspapers and television broadcasting media and to the national and international denunciations of these grotesque-eschatological terrors. This thought has to do with the fact that the period between the first multiparty elections and the death of Afonso Macacho Marceta Dhlakama, president of the Mozambican National Resistance Party (Renamo), and leader of the opposition, had provided the country with a heavy harvest of scourge to the lives of Mozambicans, with all kinds of destruction, including the change of the image of ethics and cultural civilization. At that time, the national and international press produced dramatic news, reporting ungodly deaths of mutilations of women, children and adults, a kind of edition of
Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir, reported by Jean Delumeau, in
History of Fear in the West | [4] | Delumeau, J. (2001). History of Fear in the West, 1300-1800. São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz. [in Portuguese]. |
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.
Antoine Vérard, who around 1500 was the great specialist of illustrated editions in the French language and reached an extensive audience, owning two stores in Paris, a warehouse in Tours and trading with England, did not fail to make figures in his publications an
Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir, to which we must pay attention. It was an edition that included illustrations that were both simple and shocking and represent the fifteen signs announcing the end of the world.
| [4] | Delumeau, J. (2001). History of Fear in the West, 1300-1800. São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz. [in Portuguese]. |
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.
In fact, journalism requires very deep rhetorical-philosophical reflection, given that it is a practice very influenced by the
logos of
la condition humaine that seems strongly significant, especially taking into account the iconic reality of life in the space of media circum-navigation of information. Journalism and news production are an activity based on “negotiations”
| [7] | Henriques, R. P. (2014). Language, Truth and Knowledge: An Epistemological Analysis of Journalism from Two Semiotic Perspectives. Vitória, Espírito Santos, Brazil: EDUFES. [in Portuguese]. |
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in a system that has specific rules and language, being, in fact, subject to various manipulations, of social contexts, in the spatio-temporal domain marked by achievements, tribulations and fear, offering, so to speak, various lines and points of reading and interpretation of adverse phenomena. In other words, this professional reality means that, in its practical realization, journalism is besieged by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tendencies, which often call into question the codes to which this profession is enclosed.
The editorial of October 11, 2024, of Jornal Savana, [Savannah] entitled “In the Mozambican elections, not everything that goes wrong is the work of chance”, shows the level of man’s intervention in processes that would be, so to speak, free from clientelist manipulation by individuals used to old practices of ideological corruption. Such individuals show no interest in building harmony and tranquility, but in promoting the selective distribution of resources and benefits that should serve everyone, because they belong to everyone. Often, such situations generate violence, promoting a dysfunctional system and a byzantine policy of state institutions. A doxa that corrodes the electoral system calls into question the entire symmetrical doctrine of peaceful coexistence. Consequently, protest initiatives such as those that occur in post-election periods come into force.
Reporting on an experience on the management of the electoral process, Agostinho Levieque recently published
The daydreams of an electoral agent in Mozambique, a book in which he writes that “the press exerts a remarkable influence on populations and political parties, by publicizing the activities of electoral management bodies”
| [11] | Levieque, L. (2023). The Daydreams of an Electoral Agent in Mozambique. Maputo: PubliFix – Publishers. [in Portuguese]. |
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. However, the role of the press, by itself, is Lilliputian in order to substantiate a culture of transparency in the electoral process, to the extent that access to information, although regulated by law, since the first multiparty elections, held in the light of the General Peace Agreement, supported by the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique (CRM) of 1990, comes up against profound limitations imposed by the political parties with parliamentary seats to which the initiative of law is arrogated. This subversion is very remarkable from the constant amendment of the Electoral Law, involving the parties and not society. In other words, excluding the majority of citizens, academics and scholars of political science, philosophical sciences and sociological sciences of all kinds, politicians appropriate the power to dream for the majority, and assign to themselves the task of thinking about the processes of nation-building. The contradictions, which arise in electoral moments result from the distrust that hovers over the main intention of political exclusion, considering that, by definition, politics should not serve only individual interests. Individualism contradicts the idea that “society is far more naïve than the individual man”
| [17] | Nietzsche, F. (2012). The Will to Power. Lisbon: Alfanje. [in Portuguese]. |
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. According to Friedrich Nietzsche’s considerations, it is not possible to build a State without the integration of the people, because the State is the people themselves.
It is necessary to insist on the role that the Jews seem to have played in the rise of the apocalyptic fears and hopes that lived through that era in Western populations. Increasingly persecuted since the Black Death, victims of
pogroms, envied by people, pointed out to the revenge of the crowds by fanatical preachers, they came to wait for the coming revenge of the Antichrist – the Turk – who had avenged oppressed Israel and would make the Christian churches “stables for animals”.
| [4] | Delumeau, J. (2001). History of Fear in the West, 1300-1800. São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz. [in Portuguese]. |
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.
“Vindictive” or unnecessary reprisal is any revenge that tends to kill the history of the country, an erasure that leaves no trace as if the country had not existed, as if there had never been a people who thought and worked for the good of all. As if independence had been in vain and was totally dispensable. A justice for development cannot be “ruthless”, above all, guided by incredible emotions of hydrophobia, resentment or collective frustration. Meanwhile, the landscape created by the system of governance led the people to exhaustion, to the limits of a society that was waiting for the pull of the trigger to fire cannons of hydrophobia against those who supposedly governed badly during 50 years of independence.
3. Democracy, Violence and Heinous Crimes
The programs “Casos do dia” [Cases of the day] and “Balanço geral” [General balance], from the independent televisions Miramar and TVSucesso [Success TV] respectively, are a clear example of journalism that mixes intrinsic values of contemporary journalism, which will certainly leave a legacy for the future, not only of the journalistic profession itself, but also of the democracy and democratization of institutions, whose programming and functioning do not depend on the State. On the other hand, this shows that the exercise of democracy reaches its peak in a context in which violence and crimes seem to reach uncontrollable levels after the announcement of the results of the elections on October 9, 2024. These two television programs convey the realistic feelings of the people petrified by daily violence, hunger and poverty. A society that was born and grew up in war and misery and has never known material and economic freedom.
The role of television, as an iconic device, means that journalists have “special glasses through which they see certain things and not others”
| [1] | Bourdieu, P. (1997). On Television followed by The Influence of Journalism and the Olympic Games. Rio de Janeiro: Zehar Editor. [in Portuguese]. |
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, operating a rigorous selection of images and constructing their exegetical significance, which highlights Mozambican particularities in an equally particular context in which society manifests its boredom in the face of the governance problems that have dragged on since the country became independent from the Portuguese colonialism, in 1975. Devoutly thinking, one will say the following divine maxim: just as the word is the image of God, images are the linguistic expression of the television reporter. Images exert an “active power”
| [16] | Mourão, J. A. (2011). Metaphor of the Image of Thomas Aquinas for C. S. Peirce. In M. L. de Martins, J. B. Miranda, M. Oliveira & J. Godinho (Eds.), Image and Thought, pp. 21-27. Coimbra: Grácio Editor. [in Portuguese]. |
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that influences passive subjects, often unconcerned with everyday occurrences. People’s daily lives are an irreverent sum of the means of survival, and questions of governance are of little interest to people occupied with the production of subjective factors of ideological counterbalance, because thought is demonstrated by its effects. In other words, what arouses enthusiasm has to be authentic.
The newspaper
Dossier & Factos: a verdade acima de tudo e todos [Dossier & Facts: Truth above all and everyone], in its issue no. 595, of January 25, 2025, has published a series of very suggestive titles, whose interpretation refers to certain codes and norms of dramatological and cinematographic production. As we can see, for example: “How long can VM (Venâncio Mondlane) stand it?” a title that instigates action and behavior, in a way, rhetorical and that moves all the senses to deep reflection on the paths taken so far by the presidential candidate supported by the Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique; “Mondlane capitalized on popular dissatisfaction” – this is a title built on the basis of discursive inference of the reality that Mozambicans have been experiencing in recent years. Narratives are the storehouse of stories, and Mozambique lives sad stories of poverty, of discrimination that become a huge package of desolation; “Government allowed looting strategically” – this title is judicial, because it launches a kind of accusation at the government. In other words, journalism has become a system of propagandistic justice, extrapolating the limits of “truth” in the terms defended by Rafael Henriques
| [7] | Henriques, R. P. (2014). Language, Truth and Knowledge: An Epistemological Analysis of Journalism from Two Semiotic Perspectives. Vitória, Espírito Santos, Brazil: EDUFES. [in Portuguese]. |
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– “the discourse of the news is seen, and manifests itself with truth”. A news item of an argumentative nature, which does not present facts that result from research work, does not respond to the principle of verisimilitude, rigor and accuracy, equity and ethics. The last title that is important to comment on is “VM may not have international support”. The hypothetical construction, introduced by the modal form of the verb power, shows the speculative character of the news.
Critical journalism, although it does not lend itself to “sugarcoating reality”, as defended in the editorial Manual cited by Rafael Henriques
| [7] | Henriques, R. P. (2014). Language, Truth and Knowledge: An Epistemological Analysis of Journalism from Two Semiotic Perspectives. Vitória, Espírito Santos, Brazil: EDUFES. [in Portuguese]. |
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, also does not conjecture subjective truths, on the contrary, it compares facts, establishes analogies and identifies contradictory attitudes in the media sphere. Statements such as “Mozambique will never be the same” are journalistic readings that aim, in my opinion, to weaken the structures of thought and action of the authorities in power or communities that have been living, for decades, in uncertainty and despair. The fact is that the way in which the post-electoral demonstrations were conducted (without operational command on the ground, sticking only to lives and television images) foresaw a misty scenario whose consequences are reflected in the very marked social, cultural, economic and ethical domains. The expectation of an electoral campaign full of promises, with “speeches of rupture in the face of the current stage of life in Mozambique”
| [5] | Dossier & Factos (2025, January 20). “Until When Can VM Hold On?”. Dossier & Factos Newspaper, No. 595 (Online), pp. 3-5. [in Portuguese]. |
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and with a media apparatus never seen before in Mozambique, led by all the candidates, including that of the governing party, accentuated, in a way, the hatred and animosity of urban and rural violence, pulverizing the headlines of the newspapers with news of deaths and heinous crimes.
The Savana [newspaper, of October 11, days after the Mozambican elections, begins with a title that conveys a frightening image: “Catastrophe”, written in paragonic letters, as is manifestly characteristic of media sensationalism. The semantic ties of the title with subjective reality are, culturally, vehicles of tendencies of violence, destruction, loss, separation, rupture, failure and death. Although the title refers to a “negative” performance by Renamo in the electoral process, it appears as a linguistic tool that allows us to foresee the state of affairs that, from the day of the vote count, took place until after the announcement of the results by the National Electoral Commission, on October 24, as well as its proclamation by the Constitutional Council, on December 23, 2024.
The ghost of electoral contestation that followed after the proclamation of the elections could never better sublimate its relationship with the level of displeasure that the country has experienced in the last ten years, mainly because of the deficiency of communication between politics and the masses. The opposition, led by candidates with the potential to rise to power, assaulted, in a way, the audience on private television, attached to a liberating, promising rhetoric. Politics and communication are, above all, commitments and action. In other words, in a situation of this nature, in which the world is challenged by fear and the public death of reason, the word, the discourse and the production of innovative ideas constitute hope in themselves.
The relationship between democracy, violence and heinous crimes is a complex and challenging topic. Democracy, in its essence, seeks to establish the basic rights of citizens, promoting peaceful and just coexistence. On the other hand, when violence and heinous crimes – those considered extremely serious, such as brutal murders, torture, rape, etc. – become systematic or unruly, this can undermine trust in democracy and the justice system.
In a healthy democracy, laws are expected to be applied in a fair and symmetrical manner, and violence to be combated by legal means, preserving the human rights of all, including offenders. However, when disgusting crimes happen, it is society that reacts with indignation, often demanding more severe punishments. This fact produces the following dilemma both for the authorities that have the duty to maintain order, and for the public that suffers the consequences of violent action: how to maintain justice and the paradox of the excessive judicialization of the conflict, without compromising civil rights? In addition, extreme violence and serious crimes can be used to justify authoritarian measures, such as increased repression or decreased individual freedoms in the name of security. All these excesses can certainly put democracy at risk, compromising the values of freedom, equality and justice. A central question is how democracy can deal with violence without losing sight of its own principles. There are many debates about what is the best balance between protecting society from heinous crimes and ensuring that punishment is proportionate, preventing justice from being distorted by emotion and euphoria.
4. Seeing Is Believing: The Press Is an Invisible Promise
When discussing investigative journalism as the polyphony of mass publications (sensationalists), Pierre Bourdieu asserts that sociologists try to avoid falling into symmetrical illusions such as the deception of the “never seen” and the “always like this”
| [1] | Bourdieu, P. (1997). On Television followed by The Influence of Journalism and the Olympic Games. Rio de Janeiro: Zehar Editor. [in Portuguese]. |
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. This assertion is significant for those who want to read and understand the essence of a piece of news, whether of an audio-visual nature provided by televisions or live streams, or of a written nature (conveyed by the physical and electronic press, including social networks). The great problem of the press, however, is to run the risk of spreading what impresses the great industries of the soul, created by mass associations and by readers in a hurry to obtain information with fire, without worrying about the virtuality of their core in the construction of ideas that favor education and decision-making that do not harm public opinion. However, in this exercise of spying on news, there is always the risk of considering, according to Bourdieu, as “something unheard of, something banal”
| [1] | Bourdieu, P. (1997). On Television followed by The Influence of Journalism and the Olympic Games. Rio de Janeiro: Zehar Editor. [in Portuguese]. |
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. This is what we see on television screens, when they publish, for example, the death trivialized by human misfortune, the escape of prisoners from the main prisons of the country in a theatrical exercise and highly disseminated by the media, or the looting and withdrawals carried out by hungry people trying to save the day that runs the risk of going unnoticed.
In these cases, the press appears as an invisible promise, since it carries with it the dreamy of transparency, truth and justice, but this promise is not always answered in a clear and affectionate way. There is, behind transparency, a gratuitous sensationalism, often lacking in professionalism and ethics. Reflecting, notably on “
Casos do Dia” and
“Balanço Geral”, one can perceive, distinctly, the mediocrity of the facts and the absence of distance between the subject and the object of news. The commitment to the truth, which has been the touchstone of its broadcasts, has a range of expectation with the impartiality or objectivity to which the media has referred us to see to believe. Believe that the disclosure of repugnant cases can immediately influence the results in the decision-making process both by the authorities and by the pressure that the demonstrations exert to contain the cost of living. The prognoses, published by the television press, oscillate between ontological equilibrium and the “Saturnian fear” alluded to by Jean Delumeau
| [4] | Delumeau, J. (2001). History of Fear in the West, 1300-1800. São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz. [in Portuguese]. |
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. As is known, Saturn was related to the nefarious planet and the prophecy of human eschatology. Only ontology can reverse the state of affairs that society is experiencing at the moment. An ontological reality confronted with collective and particular desires always refers to a tragic dimension of the project of nation-state construction.
Due to its power of diffusion, television raises to the universe of written journalism and to the cultural universe in general, an absolutely terrible reality in comparison with the mass press that caused shudders (Raymond Williams hypothesized that the entire Romance revolution in poetry was aroused by the horror of the mass press). Its breadth and the weight of television are a specific characteristic of the journalistic cosmos that is difficult to understand from a microcosm external to this professional field. In other words, it is difficult to judge the action of the journalist by analyzing only the effect of the images he produces and offers to the public for his consumption, or from factors that determine his existence. Advertising pieces are subject to very careful critical judgments to avoid drawing conclusions based on improbability, and often harmful to freedom of the press. It should be understood that the field of communication has its own internal forces with which relations of existence and continuity are established.
Media (in)visibility and rhetorical-democratic are an important reflection in the field of journalistic communication, especially when there is no fear of seditions of all kinds that, with sudden violence, question the times of truth as the press takes over the public space and energetically takes over public opinion. If we want to entrench a democracy in which everyone, political parties, non-governmental organizations, civil society, families and individuals, participate in the decision-making system about the life of the country, the press must become an (in)visibly auspicious factor. An “invisible promise” refers to the idea that the press should be an agent of fidelity and impartiality, even if this commitment is sometimes difficult to distinguish in journalistic reports and coverage, resorting to the resources of verbal or visual language and lexical choices for the process of rhetorical argumentation.
The conclusion that can be reached is that, with the environment being quite tight, because of popular uprisings, rhetoric becomes the only important resource to control entrenched emotions. Umberto Eco, quoted by Elisa Augusta Lopes Costa, was, in my opinion, assertive when he stated the following: “In moments of great disorientation, no one really knows which side they are on”
. These words translate with some truth everything that happened in the post-elections in Mozambique, in which members of certain parties feel ashamed to identify with their organizations, and the press occupies space in political bonds to unravel the meshes of the internal structures of the mega social organizations that dominate the ideological space of the masses. In fact, in journalistic activity, language can rehear any function, depending on the journalist’s discursive intentionality. This is the premonitory gift of the press that tears open the solidarity rings of “epistemic disobedience” as the “foundation of injustice”
. There would certainly be no reason for such a reasoning, if democracy respected those who support it, or those for whom it intends to serve. In other words, no reason is superior to existentialism – man is condemned to be free – whose presence and everything around him make him an absolutely necessary entity.
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