By Maira Magro
Shortly after blasting the traditional media in his first exclusive interview with bloggers, outgoing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva repeated his critique in an exclusive interview with a collective of ten community radio stations.
According to O Estado de S. Paulo, both the interviewers and the president were equally critical of large media companies. According to Lula, the media “has confused criticism that anyone could make against them with a curtailment of press freedom.”
The president also said that “there is still a telecommunications monopoly in Brazil” and defended further media regulation, O Globo adds. To Lula, his government has helped democratize the industry by “regionalizing” official advertising – the number of outlets receiving government money increased from 499 to 8010, Estado explains.
The government’s Blog do Panalto has the full audio from the interview, published under the headline “Activists, prepare yourselves! Here comes the media regulation debate!”
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
