The year 2018 has posed several challenges for fact-checking initiatives in Brazil. In addition to general elections permeated by intense political polarization and the new weight of social networks in the dissemination of rumors, fact-checking professionals are also faced with the distrust of the public, still in doubt about the role of fact-checking in the Brazilian media environment.
In 2018 several Latin American countries will see presidential elections, and with them, the risk of widespread misinformation caused by fraudulent news. In Brazil, concern about the problem has moved public authorities, and within four months of the election, the Superior Electoral Court has made its first decision regarding the fight against fraudulent news in the electoral context.
Brazilian voters will have a robot helper to fight disinformation in this year's general elections. Her name is Fátima, a conversational bot that is being developed by the team at fact-checking site Aos Fatos in partnership with Facebook. Fátima’s launch is scheduled for June, in time for the October elections.
The fight against fake news will likely be a priority for several Brazilian governmental entities as the country faces national elections in the coming year. The National Congress, the Superior Electoral Court, Army and Federal Police have already stressed the importance of reducing fake news commonly disseminated on social networks in order to prevent negative influence on the contests for the president, governors, congressmen and senators.
The FARC will receive government aid of 1.8 million Colombian pesos for five years. The combatants will not spend a day in jail. Timochenko, the top leader of the armed group, could become the president of Colombia.
While April 1 is April Fools’ Day in many countries around the world, the following day will be dedicated to finding the truth. The International Fact-Checking Network from The Poynter Institute has declared April 2 as International Fact-Checking Day in order to highlight the importance of fact-checking among readers.
A group of Brazilian journalists, researchers and media have joined to create a kind of stamp of credibility for journalism. The project, a partnership between the Institute for the Development of Journalism (Projor) and Paulista State University (Unesp), sponsored by Google Brazil, wants to develop protocols and tools to identify and certify reliable content on the internet. The aim is to differentiate quality journalism from noise online, in the face of a global wave of fake news.
The Bolivian government premiered the controversial 80-minute documentary, “The Cartel of Lies” (“El Cártel de la Mentira”), which generated profound rejection from journalist associations, activists and citizens of that South American country. The documentary was carried out by Juan Ramón Quintana, Bolivia’s minister of the presidency, and contains attacks against the country’s independent press.
These days, headlines around the world often seem absurd, and Latin American writers have capitalized on the outlandish nature of their countries’ political and economic situations to create content for the region’s growing list of satirical publications.
In an editorial published on Jan. 21, the newspaper El Colombiano, one of the most important and traditional publications in the country, acknowledged a case of plagiarism by the international editor, Diana Carolina Jiménez, and said that after reviewing the case, the journalist is not longer part of the team.
Mainstream media coverage of Brazilian protests in June, 2013, both on websites and Twitter, highlighted riots and acts of vandalism, rather than demands made by protestors, according to a University of Texas researcher. The findings, which shed light on the role of media in the portrayal of protests, were presented at the 2014 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Montreal, Canada.
The director of the Caracas newspaper, Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, asked the Attorney General’s office last week to open an investigation against Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, his attorney Ytala Hernández Torres and Yurbis Sayago Ramos, notary third of Chacao, for allegedly forging public documents, embezzlement and favoring public officers.