By Maira Magro
Journalist Paulo Beringhs, host of a news program on the TV Brasil Central channel, funded by the government of Goiás state, declared live that his station received orders not to interview the opposition candidate for governor, Marconi Perillo, Portal Imprensa reports.
Beringhs says the order came from Perillo's opponent in the Oct. 31 runoff election, Iris Rezende, who is supported by Gov. Alcides Rodrigues. The journalist says Rezende was also invited to be interviewed but that she cancelled her participation, and that her group has a "tradition of censoring the press," the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reports.
“We at TV Brasil Central are being censored. We are under intervention. Our journalism no longer has freedom like we always had until now, which is something that I greatly regret,” Beringhs said live. At the end, he said that he would certainly no longer be hosting the program the next day, and that he was guaranteeing his dignity.
The president of the Goías Communication Agency, which oversees the station, tells Portal Imprensa that there was no censorship and that the company wishes for Beringhs to remain in his job. See other restrictions on press freedom during Brazil’s electoral period at the Knight Center’s Map of Electoral Censorship.
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.
