AGU backtracks and says it will work alongside the MPF to revoke Jovem Pan

The chief minister of the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), Jorge Messias, denied that the ministry was committed to defending Jovem Pan in the process in which the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) is asking for the broadcaster’s concessions to be revoked. Messias claims to have only acted in mediating an agreement, however, as there was no success in the negotiations, AGU will now act alongside the MPF against Jovem Pan.

“It is therefore not correct to conclude that the Union would be defending the acts carried out by the first defendant in the aforementioned legal action. That’s why, from the outset, the Federal Attorney General’s Office engaged in the negotiation process with the Federal Public Ministry, a fact recognized by the ministerial body itself. […] I inform you that I have determined that the Attorney General’s Office of the Union should present, today, a new statement through which it expressly declares the Union’s entry into the active pole of the demand, alongside the Federal Public Ministry. All in order to avoid misunderstandings about the position of the current management of the Attorney General’s Office”, wrote Jorge Messias on his profile on the social network X, this Monday (4).

The minister’s speech was due to the publication of a statement attached to the process, also this Monday (4), in which the AGU attorneys, Artur Soares de Castro and Silvia Helena Serra, said that “it would be extremely dangerous for the democratic regime assign to any state body the role of evaluating the ‘quality of content’ broadcast by radio or TV stations”.

The action against Jovem Pan began in June last year, after MPF prosecutors, Yuri Corrêa da Luz and Ana Letícia Absy, accused the broadcaster of promoting “large-scale misinformation” about the electoral system, with “the potential for incitement violence and disruption of the democratic order”.

According to prosecutors, the news broadcast by the broadcaster would have legitimized the invasion of the Três Poderes buildings in Brasília, on January 8.

The process was suspended from October 2023 until February 2024 so that the parties could reach an agreement. As an agreement was not possible, the judge of the 6th Federal Civil Court of São Paulo, Denise Aparecida Avelar, resumed the process.

At the beginning of the action, Jovem Pan released a statement stating that it was under attack for being a free, independent press vehicle and always critical. The text also mentions that “defending the closure of a press outlet is an attack on democracy that has only been seen in fascist, Nazi, Soviet regimes, in short: all types of authoritarian regimes”.

Even the Lula government’s Ministry of Communications had said, last year, that the revocation request would be a case of prior censorship.

In addition to canceling the company’s concessions, the MPF wants the company to be ordered to pay R$13.4 million for alleged collective moral damages for the content broadcast. The body also requires Jovem Pan to publish videos about the reliability of the electoral process and electronic voting machines, 15 times a day for four months, with a daily fine of R$100,000 for non-compliance.