Has sensationalism on Brazilian TV gone too far?

Last Tuesday, TV host Luiz Bacci starred in of the most insensitive and sadistic scenes in Brazilian television in recent memory: during a live transmission, he informed a mother about the assassination of her own daughter, making the woman faint in front of the camera. Mr. Bacci is the anchor of a popular sensationalist TV program called Cidade Alerta, or “City in Alert” in which daily crimes and investigations are not just reported with tons of adjectives and drama, but also commonly known for the cruel habit of extracting tears of desperate mothers and the wrath of those harmed by disasters of the government’s inefficiency.

“We need you, ma’am, to be strong due to what we have to say here,” said the presenter. On social media, the program was the target of a massive outrage, with the general audience and journalists condemning Mr. Bacci’s attitude. But at the same time people criticized it, disappointed comments said it was just another day on the show. 

It’s a fact that the use of others’ misfortune as an audience magnet is not new in Brazil. During the 1990s, when São Paulo lived a boom of violence and imprisonment, with...