In what’s become the latest episode of aggressions against journalists during the electoral season in Brazil – especially in smaller municipalities – a group of people who were celebrating the victory of one of the candidates for the prefecture of Lagoa Seca threatened to death and tried to break into the car of a reporter from TV Correio, reported Portal Correio.
According to the website Focando a Notícia, about 300 supporters of the candidate José Tadeu Sales stopped in front of the house of reporter Márcio Rangel and made threats against him and his family. One of the members of the group tried to break into the journalist’s car but was arrested by the military police.
Rangel said the aggressions against him were because he was an advisor for another candidate, Fábio Ramalho, who lost in the elections last Sunday, the website Paraíba Agora reported.
The Professional Journalists Union of Paraíba condemned the agressions against Rangel and called authorities to punish those responsible, according to the website PB Agora.
The municipal elections in Brazil have been marked by several cases of aggressions against journalists. Blogs and newspapers have also suffered from attempts to censor them from different candidates.
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.
