After a massive trove of leaks revealed deep corruption in the Brazilian “anti-corruption” heroes who put the popular left-wing presidential candidate Lula in jail and paved the way for the election of the fascist strongman Jair Bolsonaro (a crisis that engulfed Sergio Moro, the judge who jailed Lula and went on to serve as Bolsonaro’s public security minister), the Bolsonaro regime retaliated with a federal criminal investigation of Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept Brazil.
Now, minister Gilmar Mendes has handed down a preliminary judgment on behalf of the nation’s highest court, ending the retaliation. The ruling is broad and unequivocal, characterizing any Brazilian state investigation into similarly situated journalists as “an unambiguous act of censorship” and continuing: “The immediate right of free speech is the right to obtain, produce, and disseminate facts and news by any means. The constitutional secrecy of the journalistic source makes it impossible for the state to use coercive measures to constrain professional performance and to impede the form of reception and transmission of what is brought to public knowledge.”
“A free press is a pillar of any democracy because it is one of the few tools for shining a light on the corrupt acts carried out by society’s most powerful actors in the dark,” said Greenwald. “That’s precisely why those same powerful actors so frequently want to punish journalists for doing our jobs, as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and his Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro have been explicitly threatening to do in response to our exposés.”
‘Huge Victory for Press Freedom’: Brazil Supreme Court Bars Bolsonaro From Investigating Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept [Jake Johnson/Common Dreams]
Brazil Top Court Prevents Investigation Into US Journalist [AP/NYT]
(via Naked Capitalism)