According to witnesses, two people on a motorcycle fired eight shots at a car parked in the garage of Brazilian journalist Kenedy Salomé Lenk in the early morning hours of March 10, reported newspaper O Globo. The journalist, his wife and daughter were asleep inside the house at the time.
Lenk is a local radio journalist and a correspondent for website Montanhas Capixabas in the city of Afonso Claudio, in the southeastern state of Espírito Santo. Folha reported that Lenk said he had never received threats for his work.
However, the reporter told O Globo that police friends had warned him to be careful with neighborhood drug dealers. He also told Montanhas Capixabas that in some neighborhoods in the city, he had been warned that he “was talking too much” on his radio program.
The 52-year-old journalist, who was not hurt in the attack, covers news related to political corruption and violence in Afonso Claudio. And in his radio program, he seeks help for people who need social support.
“The delegate – Claudio Rodrigues, of the civil police – had asked me about the most recently published articles in order to analyze them,” Lenk said to Montanhas Capixabas. He also expressed thanks for the support of the civil and military police, and the security council of the area where the attack occurred.
In 2015, Brazil was classified by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as the third deadliest country for journalists in the world.
In its annual report, CPJ confirmed the deaths of six journalists in Brazil in 2015 that were related to their work; the greatest number recorded since 1992, the year in which the organization started to keep statistics on those cases. Most of the journalists killed were threatened previously, the report said, especially for covering topics such as organized crime or official corruption.
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.
