The debate surrounding GM crops in South America and its coverage in the newspapers Clarín and Folha de S. Paulo from 2016–2018

The cultivation and consumption of transgenic foods is a subject of global debate. Given that Argentina and Brazil are the world’s largest producers of genetically modified crops after the United States, this article aims to explore the international controversy surrounding GM crops and its coverage in leading newspapers in these two countries. It aims to verify whether the press exercised its social function as an independent observer or if other interests influenced its coverage. For this, it includes a deductive content analysis of Clarín and Folha de São Paulo’s coverage of GM crops from 2016 to 2018. It concludes that Clarín’s coverage was more clearly pro-transgenic than that of Folha de São Paulo, which could be attributed to greater presence of pro-transgenic sources at Clarín, in addition to historical and economic factors that could have influenced the way these newspapers covered transgenic topics. © 2020 Associacao Brasileira de Pesquisadores de Jornalismo. All rights reserved.