Two journalists were convicted by a judge for having made posts calling the senator (PL-SC) a drug dealer and a fascist in social media posts. The criticisms were made in the professionals’ personal profiles, which are not linked to traditional press vehicles.
The decisions were given by judge Luciano Fernandes da Silva, from the Special Civil, Criminal and Public Treasury Court of the District of Itapema.
The first involves Vinicius Sacramento Brandt, who, in 2023, made posts associating the senator with illicit drug trafficking.
In one of them, he posted “this Jorge Seif in your image is the one who the PRF seized a truck with 332 kilos of marijuana, right? Trafficker working for the jewel thief militiaman.” He also made posts calling the senator “Jorge Caminhão de Marijuana Seif.”
In his defense, Brandt said that “he did nothing more than express his journalistic opinion based on elements obtained from social networks, other professionals and voters, in light of the events exposed on the internet, without going beyond the barriers of the regular exercise of the right to free expression of thought.”
For the judge, however, there was a “collision between two constitutional principles: freedom of expression x honor and image”. The judge emphasizes that the publications made decontextualized the news about the seized truck registered in the name of a company linked to the senator’s family.
The journalist was ordered to publish a retraction and pay R$5,000 adjusted by the IPCA plus interest.
Journalist João Luiz Domenech Oneto was convicted after calling the senator, in posts, “fascist”, “corrupt”, “trash”, “pothead” and “disfranchised”. He argued that Seif himself “has shown himself to be a fierce and uncompromising defender of freedom of expression and journalists”, according to the judge’s ruling.
“Posts on the social network were,” the judge wrote.
The judge ordered the journalist to delete the posts, publish a retraction for the excesses and pay R$10,000 to Seif, adjusted for inflation and plus interest.
The Panel contacted the two journalists, but had no response until the publication of this text.
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