Bolsonaro says he paid R$72,600 for attacking journalists – 11/13/2023 – Power

Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) stated that he paid R$72,551.74 after being convicted of collective moral damage to journalists, in a decision handed down by the TJ-SP (São Paulo Court of Justice).

The action, filed by the Union of Professional Journalists of São Paulo, was filed in the São Paulo Judiciary in April 2021 and accused Bolsonaro of practicing moral harassment against the entire professional category, affronting the image and honor of journalists without distinction during his mandate, which ended in the year past.

The former president published a post about the payment on social media this Monday (13). “The court understood that I should be condemned because, during my term, I attacked the image and honor of press professionals,” he wrote.

The compensation was fixed in the second instance at R$50,000 — the amount paid may include correction and legal fees.

In the first instance, judge Tamara Hochgreb Matos recalled the former head of state’s offenses against professionals and ordered the payment of R$100,000 to the State Fund for the Defense of Diffuse Rights in July 2022.

The second instance reduced the compensation amount by half, but maintained the unanimous conviction at trial. The decision was made in May, and the resources were definitively exhausted in October.

The former president’s defense stated in the first instance that his comments were not illegal, that “there was a mere exercise of his freedom of expression” and that the tension between the head of state and the press is a result of democracy.

According to data from Fenaj (National Federation of Journalists) used by the Journalists Union in the case files, Bolsonaro launched 175 attacks on the press in 2020.

Abraji (Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism) counted 557 attacks on the media and their collaborators in 2022, the year of the dispute between the former president and Lula (PT). In the previous year, there were 453, and in 2019, the first year of the survey, 130 episodes were recorded.