By Isabela Fraga
On Monday, March 4, the Social Communication Council of the National Congress of Brazil approved a request to speed up voting on a proposal to federalize the investigation of crimes against journalists, said newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
The proposal, number 1.078/11, in Congress since 2011, outlines the participation of the Federal Police in investigations of crimes against press workers. According to the Senate website, some of the Council’s member also want the law to cover crimes against all social communication workers, such as bloggers.
The version of the proposal with the widest reach is supported by the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj), said the website Uol. The National Association of Newspapers (ANJ) views the proposal with caution: “Our vision is that federalization is not necessarily a solution to the problem. The large number of murdered journalists is embedded in a larger problem, which is that of impunity,” said the executive director Ricardo Pedreira.
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.
