Rene Silva is the founder of Voz das Comunidades, a community newspaper covering stories on culture, politics, sports, education in favelas.
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00:00 The truth is that the mainstream media has always shown the favela, but in a very negative way.
00:07 So every time I opened the newspaper, turned on the television, turned on the radio,
00:14 I always saw the same thing being reported about the favela.
00:18 Violence, trafficking, deaths, drugs, and I never heard the favela being a part of the media.
00:27 I never heard about other social problems, or even about cultural and social projects.
00:38 Everything good that exists in the favela has never been shown by the mainstream media.
00:47 So I said, I need to create a way, a newspaper, a community radio, to show my reality from my own point of view.
00:55 [Music]
01:05 We are in the 21st century, we are in 2023, but even today we still see the mainstream media
01:14 showing a very negative and prejudiced side of our country's reality.
01:21 So the black population today is not portrayed, is not shown in the way we would like to be seen.
01:28 [Music]
01:38 I founded Voz da Comunidade when I was 11 years old, it's been 18 years.
01:45 A lot of things in my life have changed. I didn't have access to the places I have access to today.
01:54 So today, the access we have, the contacts with the main TV directors,
01:59 with the main TV producers, we can make that prejudice that was there 18 years ago,
02:10 was deconstructed. But our focus, our main goal, our great mission, remains the same,
02:18 which is to show the power that comes from the favela.
02:21 So we put stories of local entrepreneurs, we put stories of people who are innovating,
02:29 who are bringing through education, through sport, through health, culture,
02:34 everything that the favela breathes, the gastronomy that exists here, for example,
02:40 we can export that. We can show outside the favela what our perception is,
02:45 what our reality is, how we are living here.
02:49 So since we founded, our mission remains the same, which is to expand the voice of the residents,
02:55 to make this voice of the communities be heard, so that more people in civil society
03:02 can understand what the reality is of the people who live in the favelas of Brazil.
03:07 [Music]