Limites éticos e legais no jornalismo de infiltração em reportagens do GDI do Grupo RBS

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the journalistic infiltration as a method to obtain information and, therefore, discusses the ethical and legal limits in the process of journalistic production, since such a artifice is presupposed to deceive the sources of information through disguise, hidden cameras, false identity or omission of the professional identity of the journalist. The general objective is to define the differences of Ethics (codes) and Law (legislation), and how they both apply to the attempt to normatize the journalistic infiltration, as well as to discuss how and why journalists appropriate investigative techniques of the judicial police in the production of reports. The methodology included bibliographical research, documentary and interviews. The theoretical reference brings the guiding concepts of this research, such as the investigative journalism, immersion and the journalistic infiltration, journalistic ethics, public interest, invasion of privacy. The corpus of this study consists of interviews with journalists from the Grupo de Investigação (GDI – The Investigative Group, TIG) of the RBS Group and the analysis of reports produced by TGI with the journalistic infiltration. The results of this research show that the journalistic infiltration is a consolidated practice for more than a century in journalism, that journalists use the public interest as a legitimizing argument for infiltration, that these professionals act more under the guidance of a teleological ethics than deontological ethics in defending that the ends justify the means, as highlighted in the empirical observation.