Some societies build structures of communication with the objective of reducing the inequalities that offer some privileged places for the exposition of ideas and opinions. Without systems to counterbalance, privileged places of speech consolidate even more privileges. As part of the concept and pillar of democracy itself public communications systems was structured in several countries throughout the 20th century with the objective of balancing the right of people to inform, to express and, in the end, to promote free debate of ideas.
Based on the assumption tested by Habermas since the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), and which has been updated by authors such as Chauí (2011), Lima (2017) and Miguel (2017), that there is an interdependence and an intimate relationship between communication (diverse, plural and autonomous) and democracy, this article proposes to make an analysis of the fragility of public communication in Brazil, from the interpretation of the changes that happened in Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC) in the last 4 years.
The EBC is the Brazilian public communication company, which was officially created in 2007/2008, during the second government of ex-president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, and whose main objective was to be the first federal public system - nationally - not subordinated to government or market interests. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution, which marked the democratic opening after more than 20 years of military dictatorship, already brought in its scope the need to incorporate a public communication system into the Brazilian media ecosystem, for the purpose of a better balance of voices in the “Public Sphere”. Despite all efforts, the EBC was only created 20 years after the Constitution was enacted. The Company was considered an advance for Brazil's communication policies, but it was not able to overcome the limits of Brazilian democracy. The reflexes of the political crisis that started showing its signs in Brazil in 2014, and culminated in the impeachment of ex-president Dilma Rousseff in 2016, were not long in expressing themselves in the Company.
Methodologically, it was decided to review the main normative provisions that supported communication policies in Brazil related to public communication and to confront them with the changes promoted over the past four years. In addition to the regulatory analysis, the article brings facts reported by Company employees and by independent media outlets that explore the practical consequences of regulatory changes and reveal the escalation of the Company's dismantling.
In addition to analyzing the dismantling of public communication in Brazil in recent years and bringing a reflection between democratic theories and communication policies, the work contributes to the construction of a necessary panorama for critical communication studies, which is a conceptual exploration and historical documentation of the escalating processes of authoritarian governments around the world and their threats to plurality and diversity in communication in general and to public communication specifically.