The Prosecutor’s Office in Mato Grosso state has charged politicians and businessmen from the city of Juína with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and illegal restraint, after allegedly sequestering several reporters and activists who were trying to film a documentary on deforestation and the Enawene Nawe indigenous peoples, Folha de S. Paulo and Greenpeace report. The attackers feared they would help the tribe in land disputes with local farmers.
A São Paulo court suspended payments towards a more than $335,000 defamation judgment against Debate, a daily based in Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo in São Paulo state, O Estado de S. Paulo reports. According to Estado, the court ruled that the debt must still be paid, but the newspaper can still appeal to the Superior Court of Justice, the highest court for non-constitutional questions. Judge José Magdalena sued the newspaper in 1995 for an article that claimed his house and telephone were paid for by the local mayor’s office. The paper lost the case, and its owner, journalist Sérgio Fleury Moraes, said the fine wou
The editor of the newspaper Correio de Notícias, Afonso Locks, was followed and beaten last week in the city of Cerejeiras (in the state of Rondonia), by persons linked to ex-Mayor José Eugênio Zigue de Souza, reported Folha de Rondônia, where the journalist also is a correspondent.
The Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (Abraji) concluded its annual congress last week, showing that it has become one of the world’s best and largest investigative journalism groups.
Fernando Collor de Mello, a former president and current senator, threatened Hugo Marques, a reporter for IstoÉ magazine, for publishing an article about efforts to invalidate his candidacy for governor of Alagoas state, O Globo reports.
Vânia Costa, a journalist for the newspaper O Mato Grosso in the central-western state of the same name, reported suffering harassment after she tried to investigate alleged misuse of federal funds in the city of Sinop, Folha Online reports.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued a decree that created an intergovernmental commission to propose changes to the regulatory system that governs broadcast media, O Estado de S. Paulo reports.
Cuban authorities have blocked Yoani Sanchez, author of Generation Y, from traveling to Brazil to see a documentary on censorship in Cuba and Honduras, EFE reports.
A Brazilian federal court ordered the federal government to pay more than $28,000 in "moral damages" to a freelance photographer who, 10 years ago, was physically and verbally assaulted by soldiers during an end-of-the-year party at the Copacabana fort in Rio de Janeiro.
Representatives from Brazil's media outlets sent a document to Minister Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes, the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs, arguing that "freedom to think and express opinions and information, without control by whomever, is the very essence of democracy," according to Folha de S. Paulo (link for subscribers) and O Globo.
The proposed amendment to the Constitution (PEC 386/09) that would re-establish the requirement for a professional degree in order to practice journalism was approved Wednesday, July 14, by a special commission of Brazil's House of Representatives, reported Agência Câmara. The proposal first must be voted on by the full House before it can go to a vote in the Senate.
The Rio de Janeiro-based Jornal do Brasil will stop circulating its 119-year-old print edition and appear only online, O Globo reports. The paper’s owner, Nelson Tanure, says he will set the date for the changeover this week.