Attacking reporters in Brazil

Attacking reporters in Brazil

Leonardo Sakamoto writes about the journalists the Brazilian government and its supporters love to hate.

License details © 2008 Roger H. Goun.

Brazil’s National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ) reported 430 cases of attacks against reporters in 2021. President Jair Bolsonaro is responsible for 147 cases, mostly public and verbal attacks. He was the main attacker in 2020 as well.

EBC is the state-owned broadcast network. It is responsible for another 142 cases. Nearly five per cent of the attacks came from Bolsonaro supporters. They think violence in the name of their hero is almost divine.

Physical attacks are not unusual. On 12 December 2021, security guards and fans of the president wounded TV reporters when they were trying to cover Bolsonaro’s visit to a region hit by heavy rains. And on 31 October, the president’s security agents attacked journalists reporting on Bolsonaro’s trip to the G20 in Rome.

Since he became president, Bolsonaro has tried to control institutions representing public power: the federal police, federal revenue service, attorney general’s office, and environmental inspection agencies. When it comes to civil society, he targets the press.

For Bolsonaro, it is important that the public sees negative media reports as lies. For example, reports about theft of public resources by members of his family, or corruption by the health and education ministries when buying vaccines or school buses. When the government fails to create jobs or reduce hunger, he calls it fake news. He attacks all journalists reporting these stories.

Women journalists in particular make the ‘Bolsonaristas’, the president’s supporters, angry. Sexism plays a big role. A recent survey of women and LGBTQI+ journalists by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Gênero e Número showed that almost 85 per cent changed their behaviour on social media to protect themselves from attacks. And more than 50 per cent said the attacks affected their professional lives. 15 per cent said they now had mental health issues as a result of the attacks.

In June 2021, Bolsonaro told a female TV reporter to shut up during an interview and called her a ‘dick’. In a speech to his supporters that same month he called a woman TV presenter a ‘quadruped’. In April 2022, the president’s son Eduardo, a federal deputy, made fun of the torture suffered by one of Brazil’s best-known woman journalists during the military dictatorship years.

Sadly, women journalists face attacks all over the world. And in Brazil, other politicians, Left and Right, attack reporters. That is terrible but the president takes hating the press to another level. The attacks on journalists by the president and his family are clearly political. When institutions are working normally, this behaviour would be punished. Unfortunately, this is not the case now.

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https://newint.org/features/2022/06/08/view-brazil

(This article is in easier English so it is possible that we changed the words, the text structure, and the quotes.)