In an April 1 press conference, a World Cup and Sao Paulo soccer player for the Corinthians team, Adriano Leite Ribeiro, threatened to sue the newspaper O Dia, published in Río de Janeiro. The soccer player is complaining about an article that revealed a tape-recorded conversation in which he makes fun of the police and says he's not scared to drive without a license, reported the news site Terra.
Adriano accused the newspaper of not having proof, added R7. “This is why sometimes I don't pay attention to the press. I want them to prove what they published, and I'm going to sue them if it's not true," he said.
In response, O Dia published an article titled “You want proof, Adriano? Then here!”, which demonstrates the process of sending the CD with the audio from the soccer player.
The newspaper was the first to publish a series of recordings made by police, with judicial authorization, after suspicions that soccer players were involved with drug traffickers.
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.
