This article is about representations of the city of São Paulo made by the periodical O Estado de S. Paulo in 1910 and analyses a case of censorship towards the media, through a Report of Justice, related to the divulgation of fait divers style suicide cases in the period of transition between the 19th and the 20th centuries. We start from the following hypothesis: the position of the author of the Report was influenced by an extensive disciplinary action set up to control the city and that targeted also the media. Such disciplinary action was based on racist and determinist theories, of european matrix, and articulated various levels of power. Applied to this particular Brazilian context due to its legacy of slavery, the attempt to put order in the city joins the racism to social exclusion, adapted to the New Republican era.
Press; Fait divers; City