An analysis of the self-referential journalistic narrative about the previous scandal phase of the Sendic Case

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the retrospective, self-referential mediatization performed by journalists of the newspaper El Observador, of the news production that triggered the political scandal that led to the resignation of the then Uruguayan vice-president, Raúl Sendic Rodríguez, on September 9, 2017. This news was published on February 24, 2016; it was the result of an investigation that sought to ascertain whether the degree in Human Genetics that Sendic claimed to have been real. From the analysis, the importance that indexical signs had in this media process becomes clear, since they were central at the start of the scandal, namely the recording and massive reproduction of a telephone conversation in which Sendic, who was not certain about the frame of the interaction, admitted to a journalist that he had not completed a bachelor's degree. We also determined that political factors and those derived from the professional self-image of the journalists involved were very important in this news production. Both the positioning of the newspaper in the political spectrum opposed to the Frente Amplio government at the time and the ideal of being faithful to the facts, which has defined the tradition of investigative journalism, were the main factors that prompted this news production. It foregrounded a transgression that, in the light of the Peircean ‘mentality’ and the iconic and symbolic signs of the Uruguayan social imaginary, was interpreted as an affront to a central myth of this imaginary, namely, the 'myth of a country of cultured citizens'.