Abstract
This article problematizes the institutionalization of the so-called “mainstream press” in Brazil, conceived as a “fourth power,” between the dictatorship and democracy. The analysis will be based on the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo, two companies that, from the authoritarian modernization they underwent during the dictatorship, to their position as incisive agents in the process of redemocratization, have gone through processes often ambiguous and tortuous. To this end, the text intends to identify, at some specific moments in the history of these newspapers, characteristics that allow us to configure the search for an authority among the actors in the foreground of a scene of political representation, which is crucial to understanding how newspapers define and legitimize their identities in and over time.
communication; politics; journalism; dictatorship; democracy