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Public pressure leads Brazilian state to unblock digital newspaper

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  • February 24, 2011

By Adriana Prado

Responding to public outcry, the government of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil plans to remove access restrictions to the site of the online newspaper Midiamax, which was blocked on public computers connected to the system of the Superintendency of Information Management, Midiamax reports.

“To me…you don’t need to block anything…It wasn’t our decision. I’m going to order them to unblock it,” Governor André Puccinelli said, quoted by the website, which had campaigned with the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) against what it called government censorship.

The is not the first time the site has found itself effectively censored: Midiamax was shut down for four days by online attacks in 2010 and was temporarily barred from publishing news about a state government 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.

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