Preston Kifer (left), undergraduate student majoring in political science and theater, and Dr. Josh Scacco (right) associate professor in the Department of Communication and director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy, led the discussion with Alves (center). (Photo by Corey Lepak)
The USF College of Art and Sciences (CAS) and Center for Sustainable Democracy welcomed Rosental Calmon Alves, Knight Chair in International Journalism and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin, for the Democracy and Citizenship Speakers Series.
The discussion, “Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy and Press Freedom in Times of Polarization and Disinformation,” was held on Jan. 30 at the Patel Center for Global Solutions.
Alves focused on Latin America’s struggle to establish stable democracies as the result of new waves of authoritarianism and anti-democratic movements, which frequently take aim at the news media and press freedom.
Journalism in Latin America, he explained, has been censored by populist leaders through the use of new digital media ecosystems, spreading disinformation and propaganda at speeds unlike what he has witnessed in the past.
“I used to say that the bad guys learned how to use social media and new tools ahead of the good guys,” he explained. “Anti-Democratic forces have been seizing this opportunity in a very strong way.”
As a seasoned journalist with 27 years of professional experience, Alves transitioned to academia in the United States in March 1996 after serving as a journalism professor in Brazil. Hailing from Rio de Janeiro, he was the managing editor of Jornal do Brasil, a prominent Brazilian newspaper, for 23 years.
Alves became the inaugural holder of the Knight Chair in International Journalism in 1995, followed by the creation of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas in 2002 with a $2 million grant from the Knight Foundation.
Based at the University of Texas at Austin, the Knight Center focuses on training journalists across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Alves, who served as a foreign correspondent in various countries, pioneered online journalism in Brazil, launching the first real-time finance news service in 1991 and the online edition of Jornal do Brasil in 1994.
“We are in a moment where [disinformation] could get worse due to artificial intelligence,” he said. “We need to make people more conscious and skeptical of what they see online.”
This is why, he also emphasized, media literacy matters in making the public aware of what journalism is and the role it has in democracy.
“The essence of journalism is exactly the discipline of verification. We [journalists] verify things. We are here to verify things for you. However, we [journalists] are not letting people know that is what we do and are very vulnerable because of that,” he said.
Learn more about attending future Democracy and Citizenship Series lectures.