A Brazilian reporter was arrested and booked for contempt of authority on Tuesday, Feb. 28, while gathering information about an airplane accident in the Amazonian city of Manaus, according to the news site Portal Amazônia.
A reporter denounced aggression by the president of the local city council of Matozinhos, in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil, after a meeting on Monday, Feb. 27, in which the council approved a 34 percent hike in members' salaries, reported the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Lúcio Flávio Pinto, four-time winner of Brazil's most important journalism award, the Esso, said he would no longer appeal the libel lawsuit in which he was sentenced to pay roughly $4,600 in moral damages for articles accusing the owner of a company of landgrabbing in Pará, a region in northern Brazil, according to the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.
After speaking with the victim's friends and relatives, investigators into the death of Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues have found stronger evidence that the reporter was killed because of his journalistic activities, explained the news website Midiamax. Paraguayan reporter Cándido Figueiredo said he was warned by the Brazilian police of a plan to kill the journalist, known as Paulo Rocaro, because of his coverage of drug trafficking on the border between the two nations.
The Brazilian news website Congresso em Foco was acquitted of defamation in the first of one of many lawsuits brought against the site, which published a series of reports on the existence of salaries higher than the constitutional ceiling for politicians, authorities and civil servants in the executive, legislative and judiciary branches, reported the Forum for the Right to Access Public Information.
In an article titled "Will the land grabbers win?" and published Saturday, Feb. 11, the editor of the Brazilian newspaper Jornal Pessoal, Lúcio Flávio Pinto, reported that the Supreme Court denied his appeal to a lawsuit filed by one of country´s largest construction companies and ordered the journalist to pay roughly $4,600 in moral damages, according to the website Socioambiental.
After accusations of skewed coverage of the security forces strike in Río de Janeiro favoring the government, on Sunday, Feb. 12, a news team from TV Globo was harassed and thrown out of a protest of firefighters and military police in the neighborhood of Copacabana, reported the news portal Terra and newspaper Jornal do Brasil.
National and international journalism associations denounced the attack that killed Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues, known as Paulo Rocaro, in the early hours Monday, Feb. 13, in Ponta Porã, Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border with Paraguay. Rocaro was editor in chief of the newspaper Jornal da Praça and of the news site Merco Sul News, where he frequently wrote about politics and drug trafficking.
Two days after the killing of a Brazilian political journalist in the state of Río de Janeiro, Brazilian reporter Jorge Estevão received a death threat from an unknown person who pointed a gun at him early in the morning of Saturday, Feb. 11, in Cuiabá, the capital city of the state of Mato Grosso, reported HiperNotícias.
Community radio station, Ibicoara FM, was set on fire the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 8, in the city of Ibicoara, located in the Brazilian state of Bahía, reported the blog Minuto Notícias. The door of the station had been forced open, and all of the broadcast equipment was burned.
Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues was shot to death during an attack the night of Sunday, Feb. 12, in Ponta Porã in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul on the border with Paraguay, reported Última Hora. Police suspect it was a hired killing.
On Friday, Feb. 10, the organization Reporters Without Borders called for a thorough investigation into the killing of Brazilian journalist Mário Randolfo Marques Lopes and his wife, Maria Aparecida Guimarães, reported the news agency EFE. The couple was shot to death in Barra do Piraí, in the state of Río de Janeiro.