Government says it cut funding from Jovem Pan due to alleged “propagation of fake news”

Minister Paulo Pimenta, from the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom), stated that the government cut the advertising budget to Jovem Pan due to an alleged “propagation of fake news” following an understanding from the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU) .

The broadcaster was excluded from the first advertising actions of the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), last year, in which Secom justified the decision based on regulations and technical studies presented by advertising agencies, taking into account the audience , segment, coverage, among other parameters.

However, Pimenta has now delved deeper into the explanation, justifying the cut to supposed “fake news”, especially after the acts of January 8, 2023, in which a specific investigation was opened against Jovem Pan.

“It was not due to a political decision, there was a recommendation from the TCU, based on a referral about vehicles that propagated fake news. Therefore, we simply followed the guidance and rule of this recommendation to avoid linking content”, he said in an interview with Newspaper published this Thursday (14).

However, despite justifying the cut to the TCU’s understanding, Pimenta stated that “there is no prohibition, there is a recommendation, a guideline” when justifying the payment of R$90,000 to run an advertising campaign in December 2023.

Jovem Pan was approached by People’s Gazette to comment on Pimenta’s statements, but said he would not comment.

Over the four years of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) government, Jovem Pan received R$18.8 million in advertising contracts from Secom, in advertisements involving banks and state-owned companies, such as Petrobras.

In addition to the loss of official funding, Jovem Pan lost the monetization of videos on YouTube due to alleged violations of policies against misinformation, and also became the target of an action by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) asking for the revocation of public concessions.

The body also instructed the Union to initiate an administrative process that could make the broadcaster “unsuitable” for contracts with the federal government.