Opinion: Camilo Vannuchi – Nothing to celebrate this Journalists’ Day

The month has started as usual for journalists in Brazil. Last Friday (1), a team from the NGO Repórter Brasil announced that it was intimidated by the police with machine guns while investigating suspected labor and environmental abuses at the Brazilian Iron mining company in the interior of Bahia. We were still recovering from the unacceptable and anachronistic attempt to silence the artists in the Brazilian edition of Lollapalooza when GGN’s director, journalist Luís Nassif, made public the court order issued by judge Paulo Roberto Sampaio Jangutta on Saturday (2). The three articles published on the website were excluded, all citing the work of judge Luiz Zveiter, an influential magistrate in Rio de Janeiro who was deputy judge Jangutta when he presided over the State Court of Justice. Finally, on Sunday afternoon (3), a federal lawmaker – Bolsonaro’s face, Bolsonaro’s demeanor, Bolsonaro’s ego, and Bolsonaro’s name – used a social network to once again mock the torture sessions the journalist was subjected to. 19 years old and pregnant with her first child: one of many authoritarian and misogynistic attacks on freedom of expression, history and above all humanity.

Those who devote their lives to the profession of journalism do not have a comfortable day in this country. Nor can it be in a time and place where the biggest aggressor against journalists is the President himself. I’m not the one saying this. Bolsonaro’s target – he must be proud, I think – in the report Violence against journalists and freedom of the press in BrazilIt was published on January 27 by the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj). According to the survey, the former captain was responsible for one in three press freedom violations in 2021. Bolsonaro committed 147 of the 430 attacks, a record number of cases since the historical series began in 1990, bringing the total to 147. discrediting the press and verbal attacks on journalists.

It’s the third consecutive year that the head of state has emerged as the biggest violator (read more). His stance serves as an incentive and safe behavior for other attackers to get out of the closet. According to the Brazilian Association of Radio and TV Broadcasters (Abert), the number of communicators who are victims of (non-fatal) violence in Brazil rose from 189 in 2020 to 230 in 2021, an increase of 21%. Eight firearm attacks against journalists were recorded last year, double the number recorded in 2020. Another poll, this time by Agência Lupa, showed that the president had attacked journalists in 42 of the 49 lives he had taken in the past year.

Helpful and often in the office of offending and defaming communicators, Bolsonaro, if he could, would assign an interlocutor to every newsroom and put the political police after every journalist. Was he good at dictatorship, talkkey? Good times for AI-5, censorship, DOPS summer vacations, and fake death certificates, he should think. The good times when Chico Buarque lived in Rome and no Pabllo Vittar dared speak in favor of a politically leftist candidate. Good times when there weren’t even candidates, maybe from the left. If he could, Bolsonaro would do it all over again. They would arrest the general, as were Hermínio Sacchetta, Roberto Freire, Hélio Fernandes, Rose Nogueira, Alípio Freire, and many more. He exiled or exiled many, such as Flávio Tavares and Bernardo Kucinski. Maybe he would have killed some or some of them like they did with Vladimir Herzog and Luiz Eduardo Merlino. As was done with Libero Badaró, who advocated the end of the monarchy and was killed by supporters of Pedro I at the end of 1830, aggravating an already unsustainable and culminating crisis. April 1831, when the emperor abdicated in favor of his son, the prince, then only 5 years remained. Due to the defense of freedom of expression and press in the person of the martyr of the Republic, Libero Badaró, April 7 has been recognized as Journalists’ Day since 1931.

This April 7th, we live in a position of permanent alert. Aggressions increase, crimes stand out, intimidation attempts never end. We are led by a sect whose dogmas are blatantly anti-journalistic, allied with obscenity, anti-science, disinformation, avoiding discussion, belittling institutions, offending the judiciary, dreaming of shutting down parliament, and defending many facets of authoritarianism. boycott transparency tools. There is nothing to celebrate.