From Charity Grant to the Federal Constitution: The “Bolsa Família” program in <i>O Estado de São Paulo</i> newspaper (2003-2010)

Abstract

The article aims to present the results of a study carried out with selected copies of the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo [The State of Sao Paulo] from 2003 to 2013 in order to understand how the Family Grant Program (Programa Bolsa Família) – a federal conditioned cash transfer program created in 2003 – was presented in a major newspaper during its first 10 years. For the execution of the research, 60 copies of the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo were read, selected in September and October 2003, October 2008, and October 2013. Of this set, 27 articles that directly mention the PBF were selected, which constitute the corpus of the presented study. The choice of studied periods aimed to analyze the articles on PBF in the year of its launching, five and ten years later. Throughout these ten years, changes as to how the program was portrayed by the newspaper can be noticed, especially regarding the so-called exit doors. In 2003, articles were found calling attention to the matter of the “exit doors” and treated the PBF as “Charity Grant”, due to the fact that its design does not require a maximum period of permanence in the Program. Such criticism cooled down throughout the years, to the point that in 2013 the main opposition candidate for the presidency has proposed to constitutionalize the benefit, which was also seen as a positive force to the reelection campaign of the president Dilma Rousseff.

Keywords: public policies, cash transferprogram, education, O Estado de São Paulo newspaper.