SAO PAULO: Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro began flooding Sao Paulo’s main boulevard for an Independence Day rally Saturday, buoyed by the government’s blocking of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform, a ban they say is proof of their political persecution.
A few thousand demonstrators, clad in the yellow-and-green colors of Brazil’s flag, poured onto Av. Paulista. References to the ban on X and images of Musk abounded.
“Thank you for defending our freedom,” read one banner praising the tech entrepreneur.
Saturday’s march is a test of Bolsonaro’s capacity to mobilize turnout ahead of the October municipal elections, even though Brazil’s electoral court has barred him from running for office until 2030. It’s also something of a referendum on X, whose suspension has raised eyebrows even among some of Bolsonaro’s opponents all the while stoking the flames of Brazil’s deep-seated political polarization.
“A country without liberty can’t celebrate anything this day,” Bolsonaro wrote on his Instagram account Sept 4., urging Brazilians to stay away from official independence day parades and instead join him in Sao Paulo.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X’s nationwide ban on Aug. 30 after months of feuding with Musk over the limits of free speech. The powerful judge has spearheaded efforts to ban far-right users from spreading misinformation on social media, and he ramped up his clampdown after die-hard Bolsonaro supporters ransacked Congress and the presidential palace on Jan. 8, 2023, in an attempt to overturn Bolsonaro’s defeat in the presidential election.
The ban is red meat to Bolsonaro’s allies, who have accused the judiciary and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government of colluding to silence their movement.
“Elon Musk has been a warrior for freedom of speech,” staunch Bolsonaro ally and lawmaker Bia Kicis said in an interview. “The right is being oppressed, massacred, because the left doesn’t want the right to exist.”
“Our liberties are in danger, we need to make our voices heard. De Moraes is a tyrant, he should be impeached, and people on the streets is the only thing that will convince politicians to do it,” added retiree Amaro Santos as he walked down the thoroughfare Saturday,
Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has also urged Brazilians to turn out in droves for the rally, resharing someone else’s post claiming that X’s ban had awakened people “to the fact that freedom isn’t free and needs to be fought for.” He’s also created an X account, named for the controversial jurist, to publish sealed court orders directing X to shut down accounts deemed unlawful.
But De Moraes’ decision to ban X was far from arbitrary, having been upheld by fellow Supreme Court justices. And while expression, online and elsewhere, is more easily censored under Brazil’s laws than it is in the US, Musk has emerged as both a cause célèbre and a mouthpiece for unrestricted free speech.
Since 2019, X has shut down 226 accounts of far-right activities accused of undermining Brazil’s democracy, including those of lawmakers affiliated with Bolsonaro’s party, according to court records.
But when it refused to take action on some accounts, de Moraes warned last month that its legal representative could be arrested, prompting X to disband its local office. The US-based company refused to name a new representative — as required in order to receive court notices — and de Moraes ordered its nationwide suspension until it did so.
A Supreme Court panel unanimously upheld de Moraes’ decision to block X days later, undermining Musk’s efforts to cast him as an authoritarian bent on censoring political speech.
The more controversial component of his ruling was the levy of a whopping $9,000 daily fine for regular Brazilians using virtual private networks (VPNs) to access X.
“Some of these measures that have been adopted by the Supreme Court appear to be quite onerous and abusive,” said Andrei Roman, CEO of Brazil-based pollster Atlas Intel.
In the lead-up to Saturday’s protest, some right-wing politicians defied de Moraes’ ban and brazenly used a VPN to publish posts on X, calling for people to partake in the protests.
The march in Sao Paulo is organized in parallel to official events to celebrate Brazil’s anniversary of independence from Portugal. Commemorations have been fraught with tension in recent years, as Bolsonaro used them while in office to rally supporters and show political strength.
Three years ago, he threatened to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis when he declared he would no longer abide de Moraes’ rulings. He has since toned down the attacks — a reflection of his own delicate legal situation.
Bolsonaro has been indicted twice since his term ended in 2022, most recently for alleged money laundering in connection with undeclared diamonds from Saudi Arabia. De Moraes is overseeing an investigation into the Jan. 8 riot, including whether Bolsonaro had a role in inciting it.
Brazil’s X ban drives outraged Bolsonaro supporters to rally for ‘free speech’
https://arab.news/8rmrd
Brazil’s X ban drives outraged Bolsonaro supporters to rally for ‘free speech’
- The former president has urged his loyalists to stay away from official independence day parades and instead join him in Sao Paulo
- X platform owner Elon Musk has also urged Brazilians to turn out in droves for the rally as he hit back against a judicial order banning X
- Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered X banned in the country for refusing to block accounts that were being used to undermine Brazilian democracy
A matter of trust: Media leaders look to rebuild credibility in age of AI
- ‘Don’t do what pleases platforms, do what is right,’ journalism professor says
- ‘General journalism is going to be very difficult,’ media boss says
ABU DHABI: Media organizations are facing unprecedented disruption to their industry, as traditional business models come under strain from rapid technological shifts, the rise of independent creators and a growing public distrust in news.
This fragmented landscape has transformed the essence of journalism and content creation in the 21st century.
Amid the upset, journalists, creators and industry executives were in Abu Dhabi on Monday for the opening day of the inaugural Bridge Media summit, where they hoped to map a path forward in a rapidly evolving industry.
Jeff Zucker, CEO and operating partner at RedBird IMI and RedBird Capital Partners, said that while storytelling remained at the core of the media, artificial intelligence was fundamentally reshaping how stories were created, delivered and consumed.
“General journalism, by and large, is going to be very difficult in a world of AI,” he told the conference.
Having been at the helm of some of the biggest media businesses in the world, including CNN and NBC Universal, Zucker emphasized the value of deep, niche journalism, arguing that the viability of future news models will hinge on offering something readers cannot get elsewhere.
“Economic models may broaden, so I think that niche journalism that goes deep and gives the consumer an edge and a reason to subscribe to that journalistic outlet — that’s what will work and that’s what will succeed.”
It is an idea that featured across the first day of the summit, with media practitioners from all disciplines pushing colleagues to focus on elevating the quality and originality of their content, rather than being dismayed at the fall in advertising revenue and chokehold of algorithms.
Moataz Fattah, a journalism professor and presenter at Al-Mashhad TV, decried media organizations’ constant focus on algorithms, saying they would be better served by honing their craft.
“Don’t do what pleases platforms, do what is right and go to where the audience is,” he said.
“How to be authentic is to be true to what you believe in.”
Fattah argued that while it was true that younger generations gravitated toward short form content, it was still possible to engage them to take deeper dives on subjects.
What mattered most, he said, was ensuring that the right format was used for the subject matter, applying creativity and flair to keep audiences challenged and informed so that they might get the full context.
This idea of challenging audiences, rather than caving to what may seem trendy was echoed by Branko Brkic, leader at Project Kontinuum, an initiative that aims to reaffirm news media’s positive role in the global community.
“If we are giving readers and audiences (only) what they want, why do we exist? Why do they need us?” he said.
“We have to be half a step ahead, we need to satisfy the needs that they know they have but also fill the needs they didn’t know they wanted.”
Sulemana Braimah, executive director at the Media Foundation for West Africa, said transparency, credibility and, ultimately, the impact on society were what should drive storytelling, rather than just views and likes.
“In the newsroom, we always have to ask why we are doing this story, what is the story in the story, who is it for?” she said, urging media outlets to choose depth over superficial recognition of content.
“Stories that get views don’t necessarily mean they hold value. We need to keep asking why, what’s the value, what are we helping by making this story.”
Individuals over institutions
Another theme that dominated discussions at the conference was the idea that trust was increasingly being driven by individuals rather than brands and institutions. The argument, put forward by Zucker, is that unlike in the past, when legacy outlets conferred trust upon journalists, audiences now place their trust in individual voices within a media institution, making personal reputation a critical currency in modern journalism.
“People are looking much more to individuals in this new creator economy, this new AI world,” he said.
Jim Bankoff, co-founder and CEO of Vox Media, echoed that sentiment and predicted that more news content would be led by trustworthy and notable personalities.
Speaking on the strategy of his own media company, he said the future would likely see lower headcounts within institutions, due to AI and automation, but more emphasis on talented individuals.
“Work on something that makes you essential to your core audience,” he said.
Consolidation, AI and finances in flux
One of the big talking points of the opening day was Netflix’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros., a move seen by some as evidence of a rapidly consolidating industry challenged by shrinking profit margins.
AI seemingly only seeks to further challenge these margins. With many more people using AI summaries and overviews to get news and information, chatbots are becoming the new face of the internet, reducing traffic flow to news websites and destroying the ad-based revenue model.
Pooja Bagga, chief information officer at Guardian Media Group, said audiences defined the rules of the internet and delivery of news content and that the onus lay with media companies to reinvent themselves.
“It’s all about what our audience want, what they want to see, how they want to see it, which formats they want to interact with and when they want to consume the news,” she said.
Many media outlets have signed licensing deals with AI companies to include the use of their content as reference points for user queries in tools like ChatGPT while ensuring attribution back to their websites.
These agreements also allow tech firms to access publishers’ content — including material held behind paywalls — to train large language models and power AI-driven services in exchange for media organizations’ use of the tech to build their own products or for revenue sharing.
In October last year, the Financial Times, Reuters, Axel Springer, Hearst and USA Today Network signed an agreement with Microsoft allowing it to republish their content in exchange for a share of the advertising revenue.
Bagga said that such agreements were essential to safeguarding news content and ensuring tech companies upheld their responsibility to handle journalistic material with integrity and accountability.
She also stressed the need for greater transparency from tech companies in how they use journalistic content to train large language models, emphasizing the importance of ensuring accuracy in AI-generated overviews.
An alternative route, she said, was collaborating with other publishing companies under rules and regulations that ensure intellectual property was protected.
In newsrooms, amid the fast-evolving world of tech and artificial intelligence, there must be a trusted supervisory body to safeguard editorial integrity, she said.
Elizabeth Linder, founder and chief diplomatic officer at Brooch Associates, stressed the need for transparency and broad understanding on how decisions are made by media and tech companies to ensure “a productive social contract.”
She called for conversations between governments, tech platforms and individuals, citing Australia's Communications Minister Anika Wells, who introduced a bill to ban social media use for children under the age of 16.
“Especially with the development of AI technology coming in, we need to take a really big step back and reframe this entire conversation.”
