BRAZIL

Several of the numerous cases in this period have to do with judicial rulings. It is important to put on record concern about the view some courts in Brazil have with respect to lawsuits for moral damages against journalists and media outlets. Based on a combination of constitutional articles and specific legislation on moral damages, some judges have been handing down preliminary rulings that in practice constitute prior restraint. These are worrisome precedents against press freedom. On October 1, 2006, distribution of Diário de Maríla was suspended by a preliminary ruling by Judge Paula Bredariol at the request of José Abelardo Camarinha (PSB), former mayor and candidate for the federal legislature, and his son, Vinícius Camarinha (PSB), a state legislator who is running for reelection. They said information in a headline in the newspaper about the two men’s ineligibility, was libelous. The newspaper said the two men were ineligible because of charges against them by the regional attorney general’s office in Sao Paulo of abuse of economic power and use of public funds in the campaign. On October 31, 2006, three reporters of the magazine Veja were intimidated while giving a deposition to the Federal Police in an internal investigation about the case of an attempt to use a voting dossier against the PSDB before the elections. The reporters, Júlia Dualibi, Camila Pereira and Marcelo Carneiro, were treated as suspects rather than witnesses. They were restrained and threatened by police officer Moysés Eduardo Ferreira. On November 8, 2006, one of the telephones of the Folha de Sao Paulo bureau in the press committee of the Chamber of Deputies was tapped during Federal Police investigations about use of the electoral dossier against the PSDB. The information became known on November 8, and the monitoring occurred between August 1 and September 29. Although the judiciary must have authorized the tapping of the telephone, the contacts of the newspaper’s journalists were exposed. This is a failure to respect the constitutional guarantee of professional secrecy and also threatens citizens’ right to privacy. On November 15, 2006, the president of the Vasco da Gama yacht club of Rio de Janeiro, Eurico Miranda, barred reporters from the sport newspaper Lance! and the television channel ESPN from doing their journalistic work at the club. The two journalists were seeking information about elections in the club that returned Eurico Miranda to the presidency. A newspaper obtained a court ruling guaranteeing its right to enter the club. On November 19, 2006, Captain Luis Carlos Ferreira, former commander of the Capivari Military Police threatened to kill reporter Roberto Pazzianotto of the newspaper Dois Pontos because of an article the reporter wrote about a violent episode the military man was involved in at the Capivari Club. On January 5, 2007, Marcelo Zeferino, a photographer of Jornal da Cidade of Jundiaí (SP) was attacked by a military policeman when he was covering a landslide in the neighborhood of Colônia in the northern part of the city. The policeman, who did not have identification, approached the reporter and struck the camera Zeferino was using, which belonged to the newspaper. On January 8, 2007, Roberto Mota, cameraman of Rede SC/SBT of Florianópolis (SC) was attacked by a military policeman while filming an accident in the urban terminal in the center of the capital of Santa Catarina. Luis Prates of the newspaper Notícias do Dia, reported the attack. Mota was summoned to give a deposition at the Military Police headquarters. On January 12, 2007, two journalists of TV Gazeta Norte were forced by military policemen guarding the Linhares Penitentiary (ES) to kneel with their hands on their heads at gunpoint during a riot at the prison. The reporter Vanessa Araújo, and the cameraman, Antônio Cosme, were covering the work of the police who were trying to bring the disturbance under control. On January 14, 2007, journalists who were filming families of the victims of the collapse of the Sao Paulo Metro construction project were attacked by employees of Transcooper Cooperative, the company that owns the bus buried by the collapse. The military police were deployed during the disorder and one of the soldiers shot pepper spray in the face of camera assistant Luiz Finotti of Rede Globo. Equipment on communications vehicles was broken. Carla Brigatto, a reporter for the newspaper Agora, was attacked by a policeman. Another journalist was thrown to the ground and kicked by employees of the cooperative. Carlos Fogazza, the technician for Rede Globo was cut on the eyebrow.