Guilherme Becker is a reporter for Deutsche Welle, a German communication company located in the city of Bonn

To enable students to produce content that helps people understand the world: this is the goal of the Journalism course at Feevale University, which prepares professionals committed to the veracity of facts, the public interest, freedom of expression and the right to information.

Guilherme Becker, who graduated in 2005 at Feevale, takes his knowledge into practice covering topics such as politics, economics and the environment about Brazil, Germany, and the world, by Deutsche Welle, a public German communication company, founded in 1953 and located in Bonn. Currently, the journalist works constantly in the coverage of the war provoked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Becker says that he decided to be a journalist in his early teens and began his professional career in small newspapers and communication agencies in Vale do Sinos. From the 2010s onwards, he worked at Zero Hora - GaúchaZH -, where he was a reporter and editor for sections focusing on general matters and sports. In 2014, he was called for an internship at Deutsche Welle, which has newsrooms in 30 languages covering different regions around the world, including Brazil. The following year, he stayed in Germany for five months.

In 2018, the journalist started a master's degree in European studies entitled Euroculture: Society, Politics and Culture in a Global Context, focused on issues such as identity, economy and migration from Europe and the world. Becker graduated in 2020 from the universities of Göttingen, Germany, and Groningen, the Netherlands. Today, he reports that most of his work is focused on covering the war caused by the Russian invasion, from information from journalists and agencies in Ukraine and other countries. The roof is made from Bonn, which, even though it is not in loco, Becker considers it a unique and, at the same time, exhausting experience. “It's a delicate issue. We work with an overwhelming amount of information and every day the number of refugees increases, as does the number of deaths and bombings. Facts flow very quickly, and this is the journalist's great challenge in coverage like this”, he highlights.

According to the graduate, the world lives in an era of constant communication noise and, therefore, fighting false information, the infamous fake news, is the main role of the journalist. “On a daily basis, I put my journalistic knowledge into practice, preserving the truth and fighting the lies spread in the WhatsApp groups themselves, for example”, he emphasizes. Graduation was fundamental in addition to academic knowledge, but also for the formation of their professional character, according to the journalist. “University, by itself, will not transform you into a complete journalist, as you have to practice, make mistakes and get it right, and that is part of life outside the academy. But the theoretical basis is extremely important for the intellectual formation of a qualified professional”, he points out. Finally, Becker remembers that he joined Feevale University when the project for the then-new Journalism course was starting, and he is proud of it. “I learned a lot. I had excellent professors and classmates who taught me a lot. When I look back, I see that it really worth it”, he concludes.