Discurso embaçado: a temática ambiental segundo a Brasil Paralelo

This article aims to verify the strategies used in the documentary ‘Smokescreen’, released by the production company Brasil Paralelo (2020). We sought to identify which aspects are mobilized in this type of production, with characteristics of traditional journalism. The theoretical matrix used comes from Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (2005), who defend the authority argument as a strategy for supporting arguments in discourse. In the film analyzed, we observed that professional and academic credentials, in addition to the origin of the sources, are the resources of greatest value in this activation. The use of the authority argument gives legitimacy to revisionist versions of the climate crisis, indigenous causes and political problems in Brazil. The video incisively defends agribusiness as a synonym for economic progress and denounces vested interests in the work of NGOs dedicated to the environment, exposing a disconnected order of scattered and superficial facts when dealing with the whole.