A Brazilian court sentenced the former president in second instance Jair Bolsonaro to pay one compensation of 50,000 reais ($10,000) by moral damage to the work of journalists.
The Fourth Chamber of Private Law of the Court of Justice of São Paulo confirmed yesterday the sentence handed down by a previous court, although it reduced the amount of compensation by half.
Bolsonaro’s legal team, which will have to revert this payment to the State Fund for the Defense of Diffuse Rights, whose purpose is to promote the repair of damage caused to the environment or rights of an artistic or collective nature, argued that “there was never censorship” and that his words did not refer to the entire trade, “but to certain professionals”.
In April 2021, The Union of Professional Journalists of the State of São Paulo (SJSP) filed a lawsuit against the former president to stop offending, delegitimizing and disqualifying the journalistic profession, in addition to leaking personal data of reportersreproduced the Europa Press news agency.
The legal coordinator of the SJSP, the lawyer Raphael Maia, maintained that Bolsonaro’s statements were produced “in a hostile, disrespectful and humiliating manner, with the use of verbal violence, profanity, pejorative, homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic expressions”.
“(These) go beyond their right to freedom of expression and imply collective moral harassment against all categories of journalists, attacking their own freedom of the press and democracy, since they have the power to instill fear in professionals of the press,” he said.
According to data from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, Bolsonaro was the author of 557 attacks on the media and its professionals in 2022, which intensified during the campaign for the presidential elections in October, in which he was defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula. da Silva.
According to data from the same association, the far-right leader’s attacks on the press jumped from 130 in 2019, his first year in office, to 453 in 2021 and to 557 last year, the São Paulo press published.
The Justice considered that the then President abused his right to freedom of expression to offend the press.
Source: Ambito
