Reporters Without Borders weighs in on state of journalism in Brazil

The organization Reporters Without Borders published a report highlighting the “remarkable” absence in Brazil of a regulatory framework that permanently guarantees a favorable environment for journalism.

According to the organization, a national priority for 2024 should be the approval of the so-called Fake News Bill, which regulates the legal responsibility of digital platforms for the content that circulates on them, as The Brazilian Report has explained. 

Reporters Without Borders points out that the opposition of the far-right in Congress and the lobby of online platforms are obstacles to the bill’s approval in the House, and defends the overcoming of “specific differences” to form a majority.

They also address a proposal that was once part of the Fake News Bill, but which was incorporated into another proposal: the obligation for digital platforms such as Google and Facebook to compensate journalistic companies for the use of news. 

The organization notes that such a proposal “could be a relief to the industry,” but defends changes to the bill to ensure that such funds promote pluralistic journalism — including in terms of gender, race, and class. The lack of policies that objectively address the needs of “independent, peripheral, and popular” journalism is, in their view, very worrying.

Warnings were issued on matters such as the historical concentration of the media market, the fragility of the public communications sector, the inefficient use of official advertising, and violence against journalists. The organization demands, for example, that government initiatives such as the National Observatory of Violence against Journalists and Communicators be structured promptly.  

The director of the Reporters Without Borders office for Latin America, Artur Romeu, presented the report at an event organized by the Ministry of Human Rights on February 29. It was later published on the organization’s website. 

At the ministry, Mr. Romeu stated that there has been “a process of normalization in the relationship between the government and the press.” According to him, under the Jair Bolsonaro administration, journalism in the country experienced a period of “consolidation and orchestration of a hostile environment.” 

From 2022 to 2023, Brazil went from 110th to 92nd place in the World Press Freedom Ranking, which is prepared annually by Reporters Without Borders.

In 2023, there was also a reduction of almost 9 percent in “news deserts” (areas without local press outlets) in the country, compared to the 2022 report, thanks to the advancement of native digital media and the growth of community radio production. This is what a study published by Projor, the Institute for the Development of Journalism, showed.

For the first time since 2017, the number of municipalities with local journalism (2,858) exceeded the number of municipalities without it (2,712). The improvement, however, does not erase the fact that more than 26 million Brazilians still cannot count on a permanent coverage of their local reality.

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