Supreme Court censorship on Lula a threat on freedom of speech?

In jail since April for corruption and money laundering, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has yet to give a single interview to the press since beginning his sentence. This is not for lack of trying on behalf of Lula or the Brazilian media. Last week, an interview request by Brazil’s largest newspaper was turned down by a federal court, which led to a series of Supreme Court appeals and injunctions, sparking a heated debate about press freedoms in the country.

Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s biggest newspaper, requested an interview with the former president for its daily politics column, but the 13th Federal Court in the city of Curitiba, where Lula is serving his prison sentence, denied the newspaper’s...