In an appeal on 20 February, a judge ruled that a banned blog that criticised Brazil’s most influential daily newspaper should remain offline. The case has been deemed by critics as an example of judicial and financial harassment by big Brazilian media companies and high-profile people over their critics.
The blog — named Falha de S.Paulo — was created in 2010 to criticise newspaper Folha de S.Paulo for its coverage of that year’s general elections. A satirical take on Folha (meaning “paper”), the content of Falha (meaning “fail”) imitated the newspaper’s design and text style.
Folha filed a lawsuit against Falha, claiming the blog’s logo, content, pictures and text font imitated its graphic design, confusing web users. Besides that, the paper accused the bloggers of benefiting financially from the website.
By the end of September 2010, a judge had demanded the blog be removed and imposed a daily fine over its authors. Falha’s creators appealed, but the decision was maintained on Wednesday by another judge from the São Paulo State Court.
“It’s not a simple thing (to appeal), both STJ (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, or High Court of Justice) and the Supreme Court won’t accept any case. But we’ll study which way we could appeal. We intend to go to the highest courts”, said one of the blog’s creators, Lino Bocchini, to Rede Brasil Atual agency.
Pressure in court
Some see this case as an example of an ongoing trend in Brazil — powerful people and companies putting financial pressure on their critics by simply going to the courts against them.
“Politicians, business people and other powerful personalities found that they can silence their critics by filing lawsuits”, says journalism teacher Marcelo Träsel from PUCRS University in Porto Alegre.
“To take a lawsuit to its very final stages can cost tens of thousands of reais. One that’s involved in a scandal can create a juridical torment to its critics, if one has the financial means to do that,” he says.
“These people don’t even need to win in court. Only to impose financial damage to a whistle-blowing blogger, for example, would probably make him shut up. I believe that’s the main threat to free speech in Brazil in a near future, and I believe that cases like Falha de S.Paulo will grow in number.”
The practice of filing lawsuits to remove defamatory content from the internet also disturbs Google Brazil’s Public Policy & Government Relations Senior Counsel Marcel Leonardi.
“Internet gives you the possibility to immediately respond to anyone, and in many different ways, like posting videos or creating hyperlinks. In this case, the most intelligent way to reply to criticism would be to have an online presence, though which one could inform and reply to critics in one’s own virtual space,” he says.
In Leonardi’s opinion, Brazil will remain one of the top countries in the world in terms of digital content removal — as stated in the latest Google Transparency Report — unless this “culture of lawsuit” is somehow overcome.
Concerns about Brazil are shared by watchdogs such as Freedom House, which states on its 2012 Freedom on the Net report that actions taken by judges and other public agents could represent “a possible barrier to free speech and a means of removing content deemed undesirable.”
Last year Falha’s case was brought to Frank de la Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. While visiting Brazil, he said the situation was “terrible”.
Cuban dissident and blogger Yoani Sánchez is having a hard time on her visit to Brazil, facing demonstrations by pro-Castro protesters.
One of the most prominent free-speech Cuban activists, Sánchez arrived in Brazil on Sunday (17 February) for a round of conferences and events in the northeastern state of Bahia and federal capital Brasília.
On Monday 18 February, Sánchez was at Feira de Santana (in Bahia) where she would attend a presentation of a documentary about the Cuban regime, but the violence ofthe protestors caused the event to be cancelled.
The demonstrators accused Sánchez’s blog Generación Y of spreading anti-Cuban propaganda. Some of the protesters went as far as denouncing her as a representative of imperialism and a CIA agent.
Senator Eduardo Suplicy from the ruling Workers’ Party had to intervene and ask for the protesters to ease down their attacks on the Cuban blogger. Security measures have been increased for Sánchez since then.
“I regret the situation got to this point, because I’m a person who uses words, I don’t use guns”, said Sánchez, who nevertheless praised the “freedom” and “plurality” she found in Brazil. In response to protests during her visit, the blogger also said that she was “happy to visit a country where people can speak their minds freely.”
Sánchez is on her first trip abroad after the Cuban government eased travel regulations for its citizens. Before that, she had being denied a travel permit for more than 20 times.
During her 80-day tour, the activist also plans to visit the Czech Republic, Spain, Mexico, United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Peru, amongst other countries.
A report issued by world-wide non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders denounced Brazil’s ever-worsening landscape for journalists — citing violence and legal harassment against media professionals, as well as the heavy concentration of media outlets owned by a small number of companies as the country’s main obstacles to becoming a fair place for working in journalism.
The report is based on fact-finding visits to the two biggest cities in the country — São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro — plus capital Brasília in November 2012.
This year, Brazil came in 108th place in the organisation’s 179-country Press Freedom Index —- a nine position plummet from last year’s ranking due mostly to violence against journalists during 2012’ mayoral election campaign. Brazil had already being down 41 positions on the previous ranking
Reporters Without Borders also said Brazil’s media landscape as dominated by roughly ten companies, most of them holding a strong dependence on the financial power of the public sector.
“Press and broadcast media’s editorial independence is undermined by heavy dependence on advertising by the government and its agencies,” states the report.
Another issue cited by the report was the high number of lawsuits targeting censorship against media outlets — one example being the newspaper O. Estado de S.Paulo, which has been prevented by a court ruling of publishing news about a police operation that could incriminate the son of a former President.
The report also referenced the 2012 electoral period, in which Google was ordered to remove or alter the content of over 300 websites.
“It’s hard to think that preventive censorship could be able to contain the flow of news and information on the internet. Even so, Brazilian courts have targeted online information”, said the organisation.
The report also suggested that balance could be brought to the country’s media landscape through passing new bills to reduce the high concentration of media ownership and restricting government advertising.
Brazil’s Judiciary has approved the creation of a permanent forum about freedom of the press, with the goal of debating court rulings on the subject and preparing judges to making more well-founded decisions.
The Judiciary’s National Forum on Freedom of the Press was created last November through a resolution issued by the National Justice Council (CNJ), a body responsible for supervising Justice’s activities in Brazil and ensuring its independence.
Although the resolution that creates the Forum on Freedom of the Press goes as far back as November, the group has not yet been fully formed. It is hoped it will be ready to convene in early February.
Brazil’s ranking for press freedom went down from 58 last year to 99th in the world this year, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The Forum will follow all cases related to freedom of the press, analysing judges’ actions and aiding with information that could affect court rulings in all jurisdictions. In addition to monitoring cases, they will investigate how similar cases are dealt with in other countries. The plan also involves working with law schools across the country to build a deeper understanding of press freedom.
The idea of creating the Forum came through former President of CNJ and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Carlos Ayres Britto, who retired last December.
The Forum will be formed of nine members, including CNJ counselors, state judges and representatives from different bodies such as the Order of Attorneys of Brazil, the National Newspapers Association, the Brazilian Radio and Television Broadcasters Association and the National Press Association.
Although CNJ has among its duties conducting disciplinary proceedings and applying sanctions against judges and members of the Judiciary, the Forum will not have the power to overturn court rulings concerning the freedom of the press.
“We want to stimulate the discussion about the freedom of the press, by bringing some visions from outside the Judiciary and increasing Justice’s flexibility on this subject”, says the coordinator of the Forum, federal prosecutor Wellington Cabral Saraiva.
He says the Forum was created because CNJ was concerned with some controversial court rulings, which were considered to be a result of a lack of knowledge from judges about how freedom of the press should be regarded in Brazil.
Saraiva exemplifies this by citing court rulings that set enormously expensive reparations against journalists or media companies for defamation or slander, or that obstruct the publishing of specific news — or even books, including biographies.
One high-profile legal case this concerns O Estado de S.Paulo, one of Brazil’s biggest daily newspapers. A court ruling from 2009 prevents Estado of publishing news about a police operation that could incriminate a media mogul from the northeastern state of Maranhão. The newspaper sees this as a clear-cut case of censorship, and is still waiting for a final verdict.
“We do not see this as a general trend in Justice. Some controversial decisions can the taken, but this is normal within the Judiciary. Some legal issues are complex, being open to different rulings”, Saraiva says.
The Forum’s coordinator sees a specific “political culture” as the main threat to press freedom in Brazil, through which some politicians and public agents don’t acknowledge the importance of a free press.
Because of that, Saraiva says, there are so many cases of violence and even murder against journalists and bloggers in Brazil, mainly in areas far from the country’s big cities.
He thinks this “political culture” also reflects on judges’ rulings: “When we consolidate a true democratic culture among politicians and magistrates, we’ll also have a reduction of court rulings that are excessively restrictive.”
