President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), a candidate for re-election, returns to the bench of the Jornal Nacional on Monday evening (22) to take part in a meeting with candidates for the vacancy at the Planalto Palace.

In the 2018 election he won, he used TV Globo space to link candidate Fernando Haddad (PT) to the distribution of an alleged “gay kit” to schools across the country. The falsity of the information was confirmed by the decision of the Supreme Electoral Court (HEC), which asked to suspend links from sites and social networks with expression.

:: “Journal Nacional interviews are interrogations,” says journalism professor ::

Minister Carlos Horbach’s decision was in response to a request from PT to ban references to the book. Sex Apparatus & Co. to the programs of the Ministry of Education, while Haddad was in charge of the portfolio. Horbach wrote that the misinformation “spawns disinformation during the election period to the detriment of political debate, which recommends the removal of content with such content.”

The book written by Zep (pseudonym of the Swiss author Philippe Chappuis) ​​was shown by Bolsonaro in the Jornal Nacional. The episode reopens the allegations from 2011. Since then, the fact has been circulating again on social media in several links and videos as proof of the proliferation of educational content that “encourages early sexuality in children.”

In 2011, the Ministry of Education funded guide for teachers “School without homophobia” which was part of the Brasil sem Homofobia program launched in 2004. The printed version, however, was never circulated due to accusations from evangelical and conservative circles that the material encouraged “homosexuality (sic) and promiscuity”.

:: TSE confirms ‘gay kit’ never existed and bans ‘fake news’ Bolsonaro ::

breaks

Interviews conducted by Jornal Nacional in 2018 sparked a storm on social media, as well as mobilizing opinions within the academy, journalism and social communications professionals. One of the most criticized aspects was the number of interruptions made by newspaper anchors William Bonner and Renata Vasconcellos during interviewees’ answers.

In the 27 minutes of the test, which was the standard time allotted for all contestants selected for live interviews, Fernando Haddad (Portugal) was interrupted 62 times; Jair Bolsonaro (PSL), 36; and Ciro (PDT), 34. The account is taken from the magazine. Shel.

In an interview with Brazil de facto published during the 2018 elections, Professor Samuel Lima of the Observatory of Journalistic Ethics (Obgetos) of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) said that the behavior of the speakers demonstrates a departure from the core interests of journalism, compromising the notion of “interview”.

Lima stressed that the constant interruptions put JN hosts on a different level than what is expected of a journalist. “The most important pole of the interview cannot be in the figure of the interviewer or the interviewer. They have completely missed the point and the result, the whole work, is disastrous in [relação a] all candidates, regardless of their ideological coloring. This is not about interviews, but about interrogations,” he criticized.

What also attracted attention at the time was the discrepancy between the various hearings in terms of the number of interruptions made to online and offline public debate. In the case of former São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad (PT), speakers made 62 statements during PT’s speech, while Bolsonaro only made 36.

Lima points out that more of Haddad’s interruptions may be political in nature. “It was an attempt to set up, to publicly lynch someone they think is a battered opponent, not the interviewee, not someone who has content, important information to pass on to the public,” he says.

Editing: Vivian Virissimo