Starting from the widely accepted notion today that the spectator is an active part in the communication process (although the relationship between an oligopolistic media and its audience is asymmetric), this research has, as main question, the reasons for the complicity and collusion of the audience with the exclusionary and violent discourses uttered in afternoon police news. Thus, we studied the mediation of Brasil Urgente for an extended period, from 2003 to 2020, in order to apprehend continuities and ruptures in the discourse as parts of a process of circulation of meanings, which speaks of the connection between the television product and society. The thesis goes through an investigation of the television genre and its cultural matrices, in search of traditions maintained or broken by the program; a reflection on institutional violence, to understand the origins of the discourses of violence defended in Brasil Urgente; and an examination of the relations between politics and narrative, in order to understand the populist reason of the speeches, the role of social class in the categorization of the individuals portrayed and the criteria of truth that support the positions of the program and the presenter - central figure in the afternoon police news. The research develops a materialist methodology of discourse analysis, which places it in historical perspective, observes the power struggles and the viewer s interpellation by the program. This methodology, added to the use of the television genre as an analytical operator, aims to apprehend, beyond the text, the social relations that it proposes and establishes.