STF creates “insecurity” by penalizing the press for an interviewee’s speech

For the former minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Marco Aurélio Mello, the Supreme Court creates “total insecurity” by determining that the press can be held responsible for “proven insulting” statements made by interviewees against third parties.

The former minister also said that the decision hinders journalistic activities and “compels the newspaper to carry out a real investigation into what is true or not”.

“Imagine if it is a TV outlet or an online website. Will you no longer be able to listen because the interviewee might talk nonsense? This is dangerous,” Marco Aurélio told the newspaper Power 360this Thursday (30).

The thesis criticized by Marco Aurélio was defined by the ministers when analyzing an action presented by former deputy Ricardo Zarattini Filho, who died in 2017, against the newspaper Diário de Pernambuco.

In 1995, the outlet published an interview with police chief Wandenkolk Wanderley, also now dead, who accused Zarattini of participating in the bomb attack at Guararapes Airport, in Recife, which caused the death of three people in 1966. The former’s defense The deputy pointed out that the accusation was not true and asked for compensation in court. The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) accepted the request, but the newspaper filed an appeal and the case began to be processed in the STF.

The case’s rapporteur at the time, then minister Marco Aurélio Mello, and retired minister Rosa Weber spoke out against the conviction of Diário de Pernambuco.

At the end of the trial, the other eight ministers followed the thesis of minister Alexandre de Moraes, who inherited the report on the case.

“I am convinced of the correctness of my decision. I think I came out well in the photograph with my democratic and republican decision. I have always paid great tribute to the work of you (journalists) and have always been against any embarrassment to the profession”, said Marco Aurélio to Power 360.

In his opinion as rapporteur of the case, the former minister said that “holding the press responsible is not the ideal way to combat the disclosure of interviews, even if what the interviewee said is inappropriate. The State becomes more democratic when it does not expose this type of work to official censorship, but, on the contrary, leaves it up to society to carry out the analysis, forming its own conclusions”.

The thesis established by the STF says that “in the event of publication of an interview in which the interviewee falsely imputes the commission of a crime to a third party, the journalistic company can only be held civilly liable if: (i) at the time of publication, there was concrete evidence of the falsehood of imputation; and (ii) the vehicle failed to observe the duty of care in verifying the veracity of the facts and disclosing the existence of such evidence”.

When talking to the newspaper The State of São Paulo (Estadão) Regarding the decision, Marco Aurélio said he “didn’t want to be in the shoes of the press”.