Alec Duarte, a political editor for Folha de São Paulo newspaper, and Carol Rocha, a reporter for the Folha-owned Agora SP, were fired on March 31 after Twitter messages about the death of former Vice-President José Alencar, IDG Now reports.
“Never has an obituary been so ready. Just press the button,” Duarte wrote referring to, without citing names, newspapers' practice of writing obituaries in advance. “But on Folha.com nothing yet… they forgot to press the button, haha,” Rocha responded.
Duarte also referred to an error Folha committed in October 2010 when it incorrectly reported that ex-Senator Romeu Tuma had died. “Ah, yes, the best practice ever. It’s the last to announce any death. It’s the price for a serious error.”
According to Info magazine, the newspaper’s ombudsman, Suzana Singer, criticized the comments in her Sunday column.
The São Paulo State Syndicate of Professional Journalists (SJSP) criticidzed Folha’s decision: “It is an authoritarian attitude that does not fit with the discourse of a company that claims to defend freedom of the press and expression.”
This is not the first time Brazilian journalists have suffered reprisals for posts made on social networks. A National Geographic editor and a photographer for Agora SP were both fired after Twitter posts. For other cases of restrictions on social media freedom in the hemisphere, see this Knight Center Twitter account monitoring the topic.
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.
