Interviews with candidates for president transmitted

In election years, television interviews with presidential candidates, broadcast live, i.e. without the use of editing, have become an important genre of journalistic representation in Brazilian political campaigns. These interviews are conducted in network studios by well-known Brazilian news anchors. The fact that these interviews are transmitted directly to the electorate in an unedited form is generally offered as a guarantee of a genuine, authentic portrayal of the candidates themselves. The present work proposes that live network candidate interviews, rather than a means of political presentation on television, are actually an arena in which the institution of journalism attempts to use rhetorical and argumentative means to control the candidates’ discourse without relying on the traditional advantages conferred in daily news coverage.