Bolsonaro is convicted in second instance for attacks on journalists

Justice

Compensation is in the amount of R$ 50 thousand

Brasilia DF) – Former President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted in second instance of collective moral damage to the category of journalists, this Thursday (25), by the São Paulo Justice. The compensation is R$ 50,000, to be reverted to the State Fund for the Defense of Diffuse Rights.

The 4th Chamber of Private Law of the Court of Justice of São Paulo (TJSP) upheld the decision of the 24th Civil Court of the District of São Paulo issued in June 2022. R$ 100 thousand reais.

On April 7, 2021, the Union of Professional Journalists in the State of São Paulo (SJSP) filed a public civil action denouncing Bolsonaro for his repeated offenses and aggressions. For the entity, a practice of systematic moral harassment was characterized against the entire professional category, by confronting the image and honor of journalists in an indistinct manner.

The union used as a basis surveys by the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj), which recorded 175 attacks by Bolsonaro on the press in 2020 alone, and by the organization Reporters without Borders (RSF), which mapped 103 insults against journalists in the same year, from the international NGO Article 19 and the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (Abert). In addition, the entity organized documentation of Bolsonaro’s attacks on journalists across the country, with a focus on São Paulo.

Lawyer Raphael Maia, legal coordinator of the SJSP, maintained in the judgment that “such repeated attacks by the defendant against the category of journalists, in public pronouncements or on their social networks, take place in a hostile, disrespectful and humiliating way, with the use of verbal violence , profanity, pejorative, homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic expressions.”

He adds that the attacks “extrapolate their right to freedom of expression and entail collective moral harassment against all categories of journalists, attacking press freedom and democracy itself, as they have the ability to cause fear in press professionals, often attacked morally and even physically by supporters of the defendant, who have him as an example.”

Agência Brasil requested a position from the former president, but did not receive a response until the completion of the report.

*With information from Agência Brasil

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