The National Human Rights Programs in Brazilian Weekly Magazines: Human Rights Representations in the Brazilian Media

From the press coverage of Brazilian magazines of general information about the National Human Rights Programs (PNDHs, in Portuguese), this text seeks to analyze how the Brazilian media works the representations of human rights. It also aims to thematize as the battles of the political and economic interests linked to it influence the agenda of discussions on human rights. This is qualitative research, which try to define and contextualize the role of human rights and the media in contemporary society, in order to highlight the potential and limits of the effectiveness of those, especially in regard to design of public policies for human rights education. To do so, based on the theory of ideology and methodological framework known as depth hermeneutics (HP, in Portuguese), both proposed by John B. Thompson, carried out the examination of journalistic texts produced by the four major Brazilian weekly magazines, Veja, Época, IstoÉ and CartaCapital, at the launch of PNDHs 2 and 3, this in late 2009, the Lula government, one in mid-2002, the FHC administration. Thus, the development of programs take place in different contexts and policy guidelines. The choice of these communication vehicles – the published opinion – is a function of holding power to influence public opinion, either directly on your readership, is on the agendas of other media segments, and have an important influence over discussions made in the political dimension. From the results obtained, there are also links between the representations of human rights that magazines create and/or reproduce, business interests and business conditions enjoyed in the Brazilian editorial market and also the political guidelines that are line.