Fake news of attack led to STF decision on press – 12/22/2023 – Power

On May 15, 1995, a Monday, Diário de Pernambuco published a full-page interview with retired police chief and former politician Wandenkolk Wanderley, then 83 years old.

Conducted by journalist Selênio Homem and published in a ping-pong format (questions and answers), the conversation revisited memories of Wanderley, a notorious anti-communist and agent of the dictatorship, and questioned him about themes of the time, such as the collapse of communist regimes, neoliberalism and the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government.

In the tenth question of the interview, out of a total of 18, the interviewer asks the delegate about the bomb attack at Guararapes airport, in Recife, on July 25, 1966, which killed two people and injured 14. The target would be Artur da Costa e Silva, then Minister of War and future president of the dictatorship.

He would disembark at the location from João Pessoa, but at the last minute he made the journey by car.

“Would the terrorist act really have been a manifestation of rejection by sectors of the Army itself against Marshal Costa e Silva’s candidacy?”, asks the journalist. Wanderley denies it.

“Such a version was spread by left-wing segments, but it is not true. The person responsible for the attack was actually the activist [Ricardo] Zarattini, brother of actor Carlos Zara. The process clearly pointed out his participation in the terrorist act”, says the delegate.

Wanderley also states that Zarattini owned an explosives factory and that he was seen at the airport on the day of the attack.

Zarattini sued Diário de Pernambuco, demanding compensation for moral damages.

In 1995, there was already evidence that allowed him to be dissociated from this accusation, which arose in 1968, when he was arrested together with another militant, Edinaldo Miranda, also accused of the attack. Even so, the newspaper did not dispute Wanderley’s statement, did not contextualize it or seek to hear from the accused.

It was the outcome of this legal action, because of the interview, that motivated the recent decision of the Federal Supreme Court that allows the civil liability of journalistic companies for the speeches of interviewees.

By 9 to 2, the STF ministers had already confirmed, last August, a 2016 ruling by the Superior Court of Justice that had ordered the Recife newspaper to compensate Zarattini in R$50,000. In November, they established a thesis on the topic with general repercussion – that is, it will serve as a guide for similar situations.

The text approved by the ministers says that media outlets can be held civilly liable if they publish interviews that falsely attribute crimes to third parties, when there is concrete evidence that the statements are false. It also opens space for the Court to remove content that contains “information that is proven to be insulting, defamatory, slanderous, or untrue.”

Entities representing the press received the decision with concern, which was also seen by lawyers as an obstacle to press freedom and journalistic activity.

The ruling (final text of the decision) has not yet been published. STF ministers maintain that the change aims to curb misinformation, targets vehicles that propagate fake news and that the serious and professional press will be little affected. And they said that adjustments to the wording of the thesis could make it clearer and less likely to limit journalistic activity.

The three main characters involved in the Zarattini x Diário de Pernambuco controversy are dead – the accused, the accuser and the interviewer.

During the dictatorship, the São Paulo engineer Ricardo Zarattini (1935-2017) was active in the trade union and peasant movements for the PCR (Revolutionary Communist Party) and the ALN (National Liberation Alliance). He was one of the prisoners exchanged by US ambassador Charles Elbrick in 1969. After the opening, he joined the PDT and then the PT, for which he was a federal deputy in 2004 and 2005.

The outcome of the case at the STF ended a legal soap opera lasting more than 28 years, full of elements and nuances that instigated the debate on the parameters of journalistic activity and which in its final stretch involved some of the most powerful lawyers in Brasília.

The defense of the Recife newspaper was handled by the office of the former president of the STF Carlos Velloso, and that of Zarattini was handled by Rafael Araripe Carneiro (when the case was at the STJ, one of the former deputy’s lawyers was Francisco Schertel Mendes, son by Minister Gilmar Mendes, from the STF).

Zarattini sued Diário, but not Wandenkolk Wanderley, because he claimed that the newspaper had encouraged the version for years that he was the author of the attack.

During the process, the delegate denied that he had given the statement that led to the action. At the conciliation hearing, Diário offered space for Zarattini to defend himself (the same Selênio Homem would do a full-page interview with him), but the former militant did not accept.

At that same hearing, the journalist took the tape on which he had recorded the interview, but the judge disregarded the recording: he considered that the newspaper should have presented it as evidence previously, so that it could have been subjected to forensic examination, which did not happen.

Diário always argued that there was no intent or pre-judgment and that, at the time of the interview, there was no clarity about who was responsible for the airport attack.

The editing of the interview did not highlight the accusation or Zarattini’s name, which do not appear in the main title of the page (“Wandenkolk: Communism is not dead”) or in the opening text of the interview or in the highlights of the page (the called “eyes”).

Since 1979, testimonies indicated that the attack was committed by Ação Popular (AP), a group that Zarattini was never part of, but in May 1995 its exact authorship remained unclear.

After the publication of this interview by Wanderley, additional elements about authorship emerged over the years, starting with a long investigation by Jornal do Commercio published just over two months later, on July 23, 1995.

The report pointed to former priest Alípio de Freitas, from AP, as the intellectual mentor of the action, and members of the organization as executors – further removing the cloak of suspicion over Zarattini and Ednaldo. The same conclusion appears in a 1997 edition of the book “Combate nas Trevas”, by historian Jacob Gorender, a former militant in the resistance to the dictatorship and one of the main scholars of the period.

Zarattini won the case in the first instance, in 1997, when the judge of the 3rd Civil Court of Recife set the compensation to be paid by the newspaper at R$ 700 thousand (R$ 5.48 million in current values), plus 10% of the value of the case for procedural costs and fees.

The DP appealed, and the Pernambuco Court of Justice reversed the decision. In the ruling, reviewing judge Luiz Carlos de Barros Figueirêdo (current president of the TJ-PE) states that Zarattini’s refusal to accept the space offered by the newspaper in the conciliation hearing demonstrated that the author of the action sought “only to obtain financial gains”.

The hypothesis is considered absurd and malicious by those who lived with Zarattini.

“He wanted to sanction the newspaper so that it would stop repeating that lie, he had no interest in money. So much so that he made a contract stating that the compensation would be shared among the lawyers who defended him”, says federal deputy Carlos Zarattini (PT-SP ), son of the former militant.

“When the STJ [Superior Tribunal de Justiça] set the compensation at R$50 thousand [valor bem menor do que o da decisão de primeira instância]we could appeal, but he didn’t want to, precisely because he had no financial interest”, reinforces lawyer Rafael Carneiro.

In testimony to the Pernambuco State Truth Commission, which in 2013 would formally exonerate him, Zarattini reported how, almost 50 years later, he was still associated with the attack. “What hurts the most is this report, (…) two, three days ago, there were people who said ‘it’s the bomb’.”

Lawyer Rafael Carneiro recalls what he heard from his client when the trial at the STJ ended. “He was already sick, with a cane, and he said: ‘Now I can rest’.” Zarattini died a year later.

Representative Carlos Zarattini states that his father never defended terrorist acts in resistance to the dictatorship and that the DP’s repeated accusations brought him trouble until the end of his life. “If you are accused of planting a bomb that killed and injured people, you run the risk of revenge for whoever was hit.”

For Zarattini Jr., the STF’s decision “was a double victory, for my father and for individual guarantees. The right to reply is the minimum when faced with accusations, especially because the accusation always has more repercussions than the denial. It is a warning to the press: be careful be more careful with what you publish.”

São Paulo councilor Luna Zarattini (PT), granddaughter of Ricardo and niece of Carlos, also celebrated the conclusion of the process. “It involves his memory and dignity, he fought hard for this, I followed this case alongside him since I was little”, she says. “Many people may read it as prior censorship, but, in the post-truth world, I think it inhibits those who are irresponsible and value serious journalism.”

If it were up to Zarattini, the action would have ended with his victory at the STJ. The initiative that forced the STF to speak out came from Diário de Pernambuco and which now sectors of the press criticize.

“There was no alternative to preserving the DP’s interest other than filing an extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court. And, to do so, it is necessary to argue the general repercussion of the matter, as determined by the Constitution”, explained the newspaper’s lawyer, João Carlos Velloso.

For Carneiro, Zarattini’s lawyer, the newspaper’s insistence was “a tremendous error in procedural strategy.”

Velloso considers that the STJ’s decision against his client was unconstitutional, recalls that the general repercussion of the matter was recognized in 2018 and, “since then, entities interested in the topic could have asked to participate in the trial. But only the National Association of Newspapers was interested in asking for a ticket.”

The DP’s defense will file a motion for clarification, a type of final appeal. “I will always be optimistic, I believe that the Supreme Court must recognize that there was, in this specific case, no intent or negligence on the part of the DP and therefore the newspaper cannot be held responsible for having published the interview”, says Velloso.

Just like the Oriole and Hairy Leg, Wandelkolk Wanderley took on the air of a haunted urban legend in Recife in the second half of the 20th century. But while the other characters inhabited the realm of fantasy, the anti-communist delegate was flesh and blood. One of the most famous stories attributed to him was that he sent prisoners to the high seas and threw them to their death there – but he returned with one of them alive to tell the story and spread his bad reputation.

In the 1995 interview, Selênio Homem questions Wanderley about this, but the police chief denies it (“I never even dreamed of making such a monstrosity”), attributing the version to a “joke” by a friend. He also denies that he had been part of the CCC, Communist Hunting Command.

Selênio Homem died in 2015. He had no children. The whereabouts of the tape with the interview are unknown – if it still exists. Colleagues who worked with him describe him as a serious journalist and a great professional.

Paula Losada, now director of journalism at Diário – for whom the STF’s decision is “terrible” for the press, “a precedent for prior censorship and self-censorship” –, was an economics reporter in 1995 and says that Selênio then worked as a special reporter , after having been head of reporting.

“He was a sweet person and an experienced and talented journalist. He certainly recorded the interview and would never invent an interviewee’s statement.”

Minister Og Fernandes, from the STJ, who worked as a journalist at the DP from 1973 to 1981 before becoming a judge, praised Selênio in an article in 2021. “Living with him, in the 1970s, was good for your health”, he wrote. “One of the greatest talents of the word that Pernambuco journalism has produced. (…) all we wanted was to write as well as Selênio.”

A Sheet Fernandes recalled that, although Selênio’s father was persecuted by the dictatorship, his colleague “never proselytized politics”. “He was balanced, cautious, a wonderful figure.”