Brazil
Brazil was placed 111 out of 180 countries on World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), meaning the country experiences low levels of media freedom.
The South American country scored high on the WPFI — an annual report produced by NGO Reporters without Borders (RSF). This organization evaluates media freedom and provides the reasoning behind their analyses. For Brazil scoring 111, RSF explained the influence of president Jair Bolsonaro on press freedom in the country.
Brazil’s standing on the WPFI has been decreasing steadily since 2019, when Bolsonaro got elected. The president’s attitude towards the media is negative. The press faces constant verbal attacks by Bolsonaro and other government officials. In fact, RSF reported 580 attacks on media in 2020.
Such attacks on media have increased with the Covid-19 pandemic. “The coronavirus crisis exposed major problems in accessing information and gave rise to new attacks on the media by Bolsonaro, who blamed and scapegoated them for the crisis,” reported RSF.
For example, France24 reported: “Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday [June 21, 2021] told a journalist who questioned his frequent refusal to wear a mask to “shut up” and called Globo Group, the country’s largest media conglomerate, “shitty.”
One of the journalists who was under Bolsonaro’s “fake news” attack was Bianca Santana. “Two weeks ago, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, falsely accused me in his YouTube weekly address of spreading ‘fake news,’” wrote Santana for The Guardian in June 2020.
The journalist had published a review of evidence that linked the president to the 2018 assassination of councilwoman Marielle Franco. After the accusation, Santana appealed to the judiciary and received an apology from Bolsonaro, wrote Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil’s main media conglomerates.
Nevertheless, Freedom House (FH), a nonprofit organization that reports on democracy and world freedom, identified the Latin American country as “Partly Free” in their Freedom on the Net 2021 report.
“Internet freedom improved slightly during the coverage period, bolstered by increasing levels of access and a reprieve from murders in suspected retaliation for online activities, which was a prominent issue in past years,” FH reported.
This improvement is seen through a recent ruling by Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court. Alex Silveira, Brazilian photojournalist, was shot in his left eye with a rubber bullet during a protest he was covering in São Paulo in 2000.
After appealing to the court the same year, Article 19 reported that it was only now ruled that “the state must be held responsible when journalists are injured by security forces while covering demonstrations.”
“Not only does this bring the journalist long-awaited justice, it will serve as a precedent for similar cases currently going through the courts, as well as for future cases,” wrote Article 19.
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Darya is a student at American University in Bulgaria. She is passionate about media freedom and psychology.