Founded in 1825, Brazil’s Diario de Pernambuco newspaper faces a financial crisis that has cut a third of its newsroom and keeps its employees on edge in the face of delays in the payment of salaries and suspense over the daily’s future.
Two Brazilian fact-checking agencies and their collaborators have been targeted by virtual attacks due to a newly launched partnership with Facebook against the spread of false news. Personal attacks on journalists and criticism of the honesty of the agencies have come from right-wing groups accusing the agencies and journalists of attempting to censor and acting with a leftist ideological bias, according to BuzzFeed News.
The project #UmaPorUma (#OneByOne), launched at the end of April, is dedicated to telling the stories of every woman murdered in the State of Pernambuco, Brazil since the beginning of the year.
In 2017, the State of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil had the third highest number of violent crimes in the country. In the State, with 9 million inhabitants, 5,427 people were murdered last year, the highest number in 14 years, according to a survey conducted by site G1.
In 1920, the Brazilian jurist Rui Barbosa (1849-1923) affirmed that "delayed justice is not justice, but injustice qualified and manifest". Almost 100 years later, his words have inspired the new venture from Brazilian news site JOTA, which focuses on the country’s Judiciary. The bot Rui (@ruibarbot), which launched at the end of April, monitors and publishes via Twitter about slowness in the progress of proceedings before the Federal Supreme Court (STF for its acronym in Portuguese).
About a month ago, the MemeNews project started sending a daily bulletin with news headlines and summaries focusing on the Brazilian Legislative, Judicial and Executive branches. But more than being a newsletter, MemeNews wants to engage its readers in the stories they report using one of the best inventions of the internet: memes.
Brazilian women sports reporters launched the online #DeixaElaTrabalhar (#LetHerWork) campaign after journalist Bruna Dealtry was kissed and harassed on live television.
Since 2013, Agência Pública has raised more funds through collective financing on the Catarse platform, the largest in Brazil, than any other journalistic organization. We held three campaigns, one every two years, to finance our Reportagem Pública (Public Report) project. In total, 2,429 readers supported us with R $231,167 (about US $67,000).
Brazilian journalist Felipe Oliveira has been accused of the crime of promoting terrorism after infiltrating a group of sympathizers of the Islamic State (IS) as part of a journalistic investigation conducted in 2016.
On April 4, the Civil Police of the State of Goiás handed the Brazilian justice system the completed investigation of the murder of radio journalist Jefferson Pureza, who was killed in the city of Edealina on January 17 of this year. The police investigation concluded that councillor José Eduardo Alves da Silva, of the Party of the Republic (PR), ordered the crime and should be charged with double-qualified homicide, for trivial motive and for payment, according to G1.
At least 19 journalists and media professionals were attacked in various cities in Brazil between April 5 and 7 while working to cover former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) going to jail, according to records from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji). The assaults, which came from supporters of Lula and the Military Police, were repudiated by press organizations in Brazil and Latin America.
Journalists and radio broadcasters at Empresa Brasileira de Comunicação (Brazil Communication Company, or EBC), a federal public agency, protested on March 20 against direction given by company managers to reduce coverage of the murders of Marielle Franco, a city councilor for Rio de Janeiro, and her driver Anderson Gomes, both killed in a March 14 shooting.