Latest / The Real News Podcast / The Battle over Free Speech in Brazil: With Artur Romeu | Bonus 3

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The Battle over Free Speech in Brazil: With Artur Romeu | Bonus 3 · The Real News Podcast

0:11
Speaker 1: Hi, folks.
0:12
Speaker 2: I'm your co-host, Michael Fox. This is the battle for
0:14
Speaker 2: free speech. And this is the third bonus episode in
0:18
Speaker 2: this series. So this one is particularly important and timely
0:24
Speaker 2: as Brazil is heading into high stakes presidential elections this October.
0:28
Speaker 2: The race is between current leftist president Luis Ignacio Lula
0:31
Speaker 2: da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right
0:35
Speaker 2: president Jair Bolsonaro. If you have listened to episode six
0:40
Speaker 2: of this podcast series, or my podcast series Brazil on Fire,
0:44
Speaker 2: or the entire season two of my podcast Under the Shadow,
0:48
Speaker 2: then you know a little bit about where things are
0:50
Speaker 2: and where they're headed. And this is another deep dive. Today,
0:54
Speaker 2: I'm bringing you my full conversation with Artur Romeu. He's
0:58
Speaker 2: a Brazilian journalist and the director for Latin America of
1:01
Speaker 2: the international NGO Reporters Without Borders. I spoke with him
1:05
Speaker 2: specifically for my episode about Brazil of the battle for
1:09
Speaker 2: free speech, but there was so much more from our
1:11
Speaker 2: conversation that I couldn't fit into that episode. In this conversation,
1:15
Speaker 2: Artur mentions a couple of things and I want to
1:18
Speaker 2: give you some context. First, Alexandre Moraes is the Brazilian
1:22
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justice who led the investigations into fake news
1:26
Speaker 2: and Bolsonaro's hate cabinet. He also oversaw the electoral court
1:30
Speaker 2: in the 2022 elections. And he was the guy who
1:33
Speaker 2: had the showdown with billionaire Elon Musk over Twitter back
1:37
Speaker 2: in 2024. In fact, Moraes blocked the social media platform
1:41
Speaker 2: in Brazil for roughly two months after Musk refused to
1:45
Speaker 2: suspend a series of Brazilian accounts who were disseminating fake news.
1:49
Speaker 2: Then Musk pulled Twitter's legal representation from the country. Musk
1:54
Speaker 2: later acquiesced and Twitter went back online. But that escapade
1:58
Speaker 2: has been used by the far right and even President
2:01
Speaker 2: Donald Trump to claim that Moraes and the Lula government
2:04
Speaker 2: have been censoring free speech in the country. And in fact,
2:08
Speaker 2: that was one of the top reasons for the 50%
2:11
Speaker 2: tariff on Brazilian goods that Trump imposed last year on
2:14
Speaker 2: the country. And it has been at the heart of
2:18
Speaker 2: Trump's campaign against Brazil and Lula in an effort to
2:22
Speaker 2: influence the outcome of Brazil's presidential elections this year. OK,
2:27
Speaker 2: I think you are up to speed. Here is my
2:29
Speaker 2: full conversation with Artur Romeu in its entirety. We spoke
2:33
Speaker 2: last year, 2025, but it is more relevant than ever today.
2:38
Speaker 1: I hope you like it.
2:40
Speaker 2: Artur, thank you so much. for being with me today.
2:43
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your availability. I really, really
2:46
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Super excited to talk with you about all
2:48
Speaker 2: these things.
2:49
Speaker 1: Thank you, Michael. I'm also excited to talk about those
2:52
Speaker 1: issues with you.
2:54
Speaker 2: I say the same question to everybody. For you, what
2:58
Speaker 2: does free speech mean?
2:59
Speaker 1: It seems like a simple question, right? Especially for an
3:04
Speaker 1: NGO working with press freedom for 40 years, the institution
3:10
Speaker 1: that I work for, the NGO, that I work for
3:13
Speaker 1: Reporters Without Borders, we have been working defending press freedom,
3:18
Speaker 1: not exactly free speech, but the kind of free speech
3:23
Speaker 1: and press freedom drink on the same fountain or same
3:28
Speaker 1: roots of freedom of expression more broadly. So free speech
3:34
Speaker 1: is the ability to essentially being able to impart ideas, opinions,
3:43
Speaker 1: views on the world around us without being harassed, persecuted, prosecuted,
3:53
Speaker 1: attacked by governments or other groups, can be religious groups,
4:01
Speaker 1: but also economic interests. So the ability to be able to,
4:07
Speaker 1: as an individual or a collective, to express yourself and
4:13
Speaker 1: your ideas and contribute to the public debate without fear
4:20
Speaker 1: for reprisal, essentially. And Artur, what.
4:25
Speaker 2: Is your analysis of the state of free speech today
4:29
Speaker 2: in the world, in Brazil, in the United States, and elsewhere?
4:32
Speaker 1: Where are we? I think that there is a lot
4:36
Speaker 1: of confusion. maybe I never saw as much confusion around
4:43
Speaker 1: those issues as we are seeing today. Basically, one of
4:50
Speaker 1: the things that scares me is the fact that free
4:56
Speaker 1: speech is being weaponized against press freedom, for example. Another
5:04
Speaker 1: issue is that we are focusing too much on the
5:09
Speaker 1: individualistic aspect of free speech. And we have to have
5:14
Speaker 1: this understanding that, at least coming from a freedom of
5:18
Speaker 1: expression perspective, there are an individual dimension, but also a
5:22
Speaker 1: social and collective dimension of freedom of expression. It's not
5:27
Speaker 1: just our ability to being able to express ourselves and
5:34
Speaker 1: to impart information and ideas, but also to receive those
5:40
Speaker 1: information and ideas from others. So the way we are
5:47
Speaker 1: talking about, or at least the way that some political groups,
5:52
Speaker 1: and specifically the far right nowadays, everywhere in the world,
5:59
Speaker 1: not specifically in the U.S., has been instrumentalizing the idea
6:07
Speaker 1: of free speech for their own political purpose and abandoning
6:17
Speaker 1: a key aspect, a key dimension of freedom of expression,
6:22
Speaker 1: which is this more social and collective dimension to receive plural, reliable, diverse,
6:30
Speaker 1: and free information from others. And a third issue, and
6:35
Speaker 1: I think that's behind most of this confusion as well,
6:41
Speaker 1: is the role that big tech social media platforms are
6:45
Speaker 1: having on this discussion. Because we have the idea that
6:52
Speaker 1: regulating this economic activity sector would be the same as censorship.
7:03
Speaker 1: But actually, better regulation, good regulation, democratic supervision, improve the
7:10
Speaker 1: condition for free speech and the press freedom and the
7:14
Speaker 1: integrity of information in general. So this opposition between the
7:21
Speaker 1: ability to be able to impart your ideas and the
7:26
Speaker 1: need that... governments have to find a way to regulate
7:31
Speaker 1: the digital sphere, arena, online, they are not opposed to
7:39
Speaker 1: each other. But it's a complex discussion because emerging technology
7:46
Speaker 1: always poses new problems. And even if we are not
7:50
Speaker 1: saying that social media platforms are necessarily new to our
7:55
Speaker 1: political landscape, AI is becoming something more popularized. And we
8:03
Speaker 1: don't know the impact that AI will have in this cacophony, this,
8:10
Speaker 1: I don't know, some people are calling it lymphodynamics or
8:14
Speaker 1: this crisis of reliable information. And the key problem here
8:21
Speaker 1: is all those things together are fragmenting public conversation, public debate,
8:29
Speaker 1: and public debate is at the core of our democracies.
8:33
Speaker 1: So there is a clear link between this fragmentation of
8:37
Speaker 1: public debate due to all this and the erosion of
8:41
Speaker 1: democracies everywhere.
8:44
Speaker 2: Artur, you've just mentioned everything you said. I was like, ah,
8:47
Speaker 2: we have to, we need to talk more about that
8:49
Speaker 2: because this is, this is, this is at the root
8:51
Speaker 2: of all this is why it's so important. Before we
8:53
Speaker 2: kind of dive into more specifics of all those things
8:55
Speaker 2: that you just mentioned.
8:57
Speaker 1: I have this idea, like this hypothesis.
8:59
Speaker 2: Are we in a moment where the far right folks
9:04
Speaker 2: like Trump and Bolsonaro are trying to redefine free speech
9:10
Speaker 2: kind of in their favor instead of like what you mentioned? Oh,
9:14
Speaker 2: we need actually some regulation so that we can have
9:18
Speaker 2: a field where we're actually getting not just random information
9:23
Speaker 2: and fake lies and everything else for everybody else, but
9:25
Speaker 2: we're actually getting information that is what we should be receiving.
9:28
Speaker 2: Are we in a moment right now where certain groups
9:33
Speaker 2: are trying to redefine what free speech means so that
9:37
Speaker 2: they can use it to push their agenda?
9:40
Speaker 1: Of course. It's very clear. It's been happening for a while.
9:45
Speaker 1: And it's crazy how effective It is because I think
9:51
Speaker 1: there is people are very concerned with society in general,
9:57
Speaker 1: like every day on our day. lives, every citizen is
10:03
Speaker 1: concerned with their ability to basic freedom. And I think
10:08
Speaker 1: that for a very long time, at least in other democracies,
10:14
Speaker 1: this is something that was kind of taken for granted.
10:18
Speaker 1: And even if there were some complex discussions from time
10:23
Speaker 1: to time, there was at least this frame, this common ground,
10:28
Speaker 1: this common denominator where there were international standards in terms
10:35
Speaker 1: of human rights related to free speech, very clearly defined.
10:42
Speaker 1: But sometimes there is these complex issues where you have
10:47
Speaker 1: limits to to free speech, right? It's not an absolute
10:51
Speaker 1: right as a series of human rights. They are not
10:56
Speaker 1: absolute in themselves. There is a balance between rights. And
11:01
Speaker 1: for a long time, I think it generated some stress
11:07
Speaker 1: and tension, but it was kind of relevant discussions, philosophical discussions.
11:13
Speaker 1: People may disagree, but still we had a common ground.
11:17
Speaker 1: What we've been seeing lately for the past, I don't know,
11:20
Speaker 1: 10 years at least, is that the way those limits
11:24
Speaker 1: are defined and their political appropriation is stressing this debate.
11:33
Speaker 1: And we are seeing a relevant debate for democracies and
11:40
Speaker 1: to ensure rights and public participation in general. being distorted, inverted,
11:51
Speaker 1: in a sense that a specific political group is using
11:55
Speaker 1: this to play the victims and saying that they are
11:59
Speaker 1: being oppressed by those ideas. And they made a flag,
12:06
Speaker 1: a political flag out of this. And it's been very
12:10
Speaker 1: effective in terms of how this idea has permeated society
12:15
Speaker 1: and gaining in capillarity. And I think our field of
12:22
Speaker 1: organizations that are defending freedom of expression, press freedom, is
12:26
Speaker 1: having a lot of difficulty to fight back or reframe
12:30
Speaker 1: the debate. So we are talking about those issues from
12:34
Speaker 1: a rights-based approach and not from a political biased approach.
12:42
Speaker 1: Just to give an example, specific example in Brazil, There
12:46
Speaker 1: was a very important milestone march protest during the Independence
12:53
Speaker 1: Day of 2021 with Bolsonaro. Thousands of people in the
13:00
Speaker 1: streets supporting Bolsonaro, supporters of Bolsonaro going to flooding the
13:05
Speaker 1: streets in every major capital. And researchers were streets trying
13:13
Speaker 1: to survey people why people were, in their views, going
13:19
Speaker 1: to protest. And one question was about what was their
13:25
Speaker 1: main motivation. And the first motivation was freedom of expression.
13:34
Speaker 1: So in theory, something good, right? But when they asked them,
13:40
Speaker 1: and what are you fighting against? And the first was
13:45
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court in Brazil, uh, which is, I won't
13:48
Speaker 1: go into the political context in Brazil, but, but, uh,
13:52
Speaker 1: a key issue here in terms of how the, the, the,
13:56
Speaker 1: the constitutional court and Supreme Court has, has been limiting
14:00
Speaker 1: transgressions and abuses of, of, uh, the executive branch. And
14:06
Speaker 1: the second was the press, right? So, so they were
14:09
Speaker 1: fighting against the press. So they were defending press freedom
14:14
Speaker 1: by attacking the press. And so I think it's a very,
14:18
Speaker 1: it's a kind of a paradox where you see a
14:22
Speaker 1: very individualistic perspective. People want to be able to say
14:27
Speaker 1: whatever they want and don't, are not, less and less
14:32
Speaker 1: are accepting that the fact that we are living in
14:35
Speaker 1: a society, there are symmetries of powers. This speech has
14:40
Speaker 1: to be accepted. balanced with other rights. So this imbalance
14:45
Speaker 1: and the way it has been appropriated by and kind
14:49
Speaker 1: of really weaponized by the far right is having a
14:53
Speaker 1: major effect in creating this imbalance and making people forget
14:59
Speaker 1: why it's important to balance free speech, which is kind
15:03
Speaker 1: of incoherent, at least when you see what happened with
15:09
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk and people were expressing their views on the
15:13
Speaker 1: fact that criticizing him at some very harsh level and
15:20
Speaker 1: the same group that is defending that people should be
15:23
Speaker 1: able to speak wherever they want are doing their own
15:27
Speaker 1: witch hunt, right? So you see how politically biased and
15:35
Speaker 1: how this weaponization, appropriation of the idea of free speech
15:39
Speaker 1: or freedom of expression It's a power struggle more than
15:44
Speaker 1: a philosophical and conceptual one.
15:47
Speaker 2: Do you think that part of how we got to
15:50
Speaker 2: this point goes back to kind of what you were
15:53
Speaker 2: mentioning before, the splintering of society? Now with social media,
15:56
Speaker 2: I get all of my news from here, you get
15:58
Speaker 2: all of your news from there, and so we're allowed
16:00
Speaker 2: to attack the other because they're the other rather than
16:02
Speaker 2: having this open debate. Is that part of what led
16:04
Speaker 2: us to this moment?
16:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, social media had a major impact in the information ecosystem.
16:11
Speaker 1: as a whole, right, for better or for worse, kind
16:16
Speaker 1: of changed everything. How people are receiving, how we are
16:22
Speaker 1: less dependent of a few broadcasters, and now we feel
16:26
Speaker 1: that we are in this environment where we can speak freely.
16:33
Speaker 1: But actually what happened was the privatization of a public space, right?
16:42
Speaker 1: And you have this impression that you are in a Agoda,
16:47
Speaker 1: this public arena where people, where there is this, uh,
16:52
Speaker 1: idealized perspective of the free flow of information, the free
16:57
Speaker 1: market of ideas, uh, the better ideas will win. And
17:01
Speaker 1: actually this is happening in a specific space controlled by,
17:06
Speaker 1: by specific groups, interest groups. They're very profit-oriented perspective. No
17:14
Speaker 1: transparency at all on how those information are being moderated
17:20
Speaker 1: and gaining more or less reach. So, yeah, definitely. I
17:26
Speaker 1: think the major shifts that those technologies had on our
17:33
Speaker 1: information space are partly because not necessarily to blame by
17:40
Speaker 1: their own, because I think also when we talk about censorship,
17:45
Speaker 1: it's easier for us to think of a more classic
17:52
Speaker 1: censorship approach in the same way that when we think
17:55
Speaker 1: about a dictatorship or coup d'etat, we have references from
18:00
Speaker 1: our past and we kind of compare what is happening
18:06
Speaker 1: now and like our collective memory of what those words mean.
18:16
Speaker 1: And freedom of expression was kind of invented to protect
18:22
Speaker 1: citizen rights, individual citizen rights, to oppose an all-powerful state, right?
18:31
Speaker 1: In a very different political landscape from centuries ago.
18:36
Speaker 3: And now.
18:38
Speaker 1: censorship is not only having propaganda ministry and having censors
18:49
Speaker 1: within newsrooms and journalists being detained and killed because of
18:56
Speaker 1: what they're saying. Of course, it still happens a lot
19:00
Speaker 1: in several parts of the world. But censorship are at
19:05
Speaker 1: least freedom of expression and free speech is also eroded.
19:11
Speaker 4: When not only the state, because the idea behind this
19:15
Speaker 4: is that the state should restrain itself from any interference
19:21
Speaker 4: in the free flow of information, right?
19:23
Speaker 1: So any kind of interference equals bad, equals censorship. People
19:29
Speaker 1: should be able to speak freely without government or state interference.
19:36
Speaker 1: But that's not enough. You also need positive obligation. And
19:40
Speaker 1: positive obligation means that the governments and states have to develop,
19:45
Speaker 1: establish public policies that will help the information space, the
19:52
Speaker 1: information ecosystem to balance asymmetries. For example, pluralism, diversity, reliability
20:02
Speaker 1: of information are key aspects of this, of healthier information.
20:10
Speaker 1: information space. So for this to work, you need governments
20:16
Speaker 1: to create those policies, right? To establish these laws, policies,
20:21
Speaker 1: how antitrust policies, for example, to fight excessive media ownership
20:32
Speaker 1: concentration in the hands of few groups, to help balance
20:38
Speaker 1: market asymmetries And to ensure that the rights of their
20:44
Speaker 1: citizens is assured also in terms of access to a
20:49
Speaker 1: pluralistic and reliable information. With the social media and big techs,
20:57
Speaker 1: what they are saying is that any regulation is bad.
21:01
Speaker 1: They are self-regulating by themselves. And they are, at the end,
21:06
Speaker 1: protecting their commercial interests and creating those regulatory vacuums where
21:15
Speaker 1: they can operate without accountability or any kind of accountability.
21:21
Speaker 1: And if we don't do anything about it, we will
21:25
Speaker 1: keep seeing kind of a disintegration of this information space.
21:33
Speaker 2: Following from that point, can you talk a little bit
21:35
Speaker 2: about what we saw over the last year? For instance,
21:37
Speaker 2: this whole battle between Brazil, Alexandre Moraes, Twitter, ex-Musk. I
21:44
Speaker 2: feel like that's like a perfect example of exactly what
21:47
Speaker 2: you're talking about. And also these two visions, right? Where
21:51
Speaker 2: Brazil has this vision of saying, no, we're going to
21:55
Speaker 2: regulate more because you can't have just a get out
21:58
Speaker 2: of jail free card completely. And whereas the United States
22:00
Speaker 2: is much more laissez-faire, you know, backed by Donald Trump,
22:04
Speaker 2: and particularly now, but this was even before he came
22:06
Speaker 2: to office.
22:07
Speaker 1: First of all, you had different perspectives In different countries,
22:12
Speaker 1: you have different traditions in terms of how you interpret law.
22:18
Speaker 1: Brazil's approach to freedom of expression is closer to the
22:23
Speaker 1: European approach, where there is a focus on this balance
22:27
Speaker 1: between rights than the U.S. one, where there is a broader,
22:32
Speaker 1: I don't know, more elasticity when you are talking about
22:38
Speaker 1: freedom of expression. You have to have in mind that
22:41
Speaker 1: our legal tradition is closer to the European one in
22:44
Speaker 1: terms of philosophical, conceptual, jurisprudence, inspiration. Within this context, I
22:53
Speaker 1: have a very specific example. When former President Bolsonaro started
23:00
Speaker 1: saying that people should not trust on electoral results, because
23:10
Speaker 1: digital ballot boxes are not reliable when it still has
23:20
Speaker 1: not any kind of proof of this. And much on
23:26
Speaker 1: the contrary, by the way, the electoral system in Brazil
23:30
Speaker 1: is widely recognized as a very strong electoral system When
23:40
Speaker 1: he started doing that, for example, calling a meeting with
23:44
Speaker 1: ambassadors from a bunch of different countries to give a
23:50
Speaker 1: press conference saying that before the election, right, one year
23:54
Speaker 1: before the elections, that people should not trust electoral results
23:59
Speaker 1: if we kept the system as it was. It's very, very,
24:04
Speaker 1: very serious because it He has a lot of supporters
24:12
Speaker 1: and echo chambers on social media. And this kind of
24:16
Speaker 1: information erodes trusts of society on their political institutions and
24:24
Speaker 1: their electoral institutions. So basically, you cannot argue that that's
24:32
Speaker 1: within his right of his absolute right of freedom of expression.
24:39
Speaker 1: because it has a very serious impact for democracy and
24:44
Speaker 1: it's not because you are the president that you can
24:46
Speaker 1: say whatever you want without any kind of accountability. But
24:52
Speaker 1: from there, what happened is that this idea was widely
24:57
Speaker 1: spread by his supporters and political groups and the social
25:05
Speaker 1: media had a huge impact on this. So this is
25:09
Speaker 1: clearly organized disinformation. Casebook, right? It's pretty straightforward. And disinformation
25:19
Speaker 1: in the sense that it has a set of cogs
25:23
Speaker 1: in the machines and it's not just coming from, it's
25:27
Speaker 1: not just one person saying something false. It's how disinformation
25:34
Speaker 1: is being spread and the structure of this information, the
25:39
Speaker 1: different levels, actors, stakeholders involved in this, financed with public money,
25:47
Speaker 1: public funds. And social media companies, within their codes of conduct,
25:57
Speaker 1: you cannot just let this level of disinformation spread so
26:03
Speaker 1: there is including the reach they're having without again any
26:10
Speaker 1: accountabilities they should have they could have acted to limit
26:18
Speaker 1: the reach not necessarily censoring the presidential Twitter account or
26:25
Speaker 1: something but at least putting contextual information, whatever, those links.
26:32
Speaker 1: I don't know. But there are several possible strategies for
26:37
Speaker 1: those social media to limit those kinds of harmful disinformation.
26:43
Speaker 1: But since we did not have a regulatory framework for this,
26:49
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court took the responsibility to act and to
26:56
Speaker 1: investigate this information fake news industry or disinformation industry, how
27:01
Speaker 1: it was being structured and its impact. And by doing that,
27:07
Speaker 1: said explicitly that, I don't know, judges could not be
27:12
Speaker 1: threatened through basic stuff and starting, for example, Alexandre de Moraes,
27:20
Speaker 1: which is at the center of all this, even if he's,
27:25
Speaker 1: and I think this is a parenthesis here, Moraes was
27:30
Speaker 1: very important within all this, but he himself, I mean,
27:35
Speaker 1: as an individual judge, but we have to take into
27:40
Speaker 1: account always that his decisions were being systematically validated by
27:47
Speaker 1: the other judges of the Supreme Court, right? So even
27:51
Speaker 1: if he was the one being more visible in all this,
27:55
Speaker 1: and even though that that there were tensions between and
28:00
Speaker 1: discussions between the judges. The vast majority of all those
28:04
Speaker 1: decisions went through the plenary, all the judges. So we
28:08
Speaker 1: talk a lot about him, but it's more like the
28:12
Speaker 1: Supreme Court itself. I think he's the image of this
28:18
Speaker 1: fight in a way, but he wasn't alone through that.
28:25
Speaker 1: It's not all-powerful judge that is doing that as a
28:31
Speaker 1: rogue mode and acting on his own. We had strong
28:35
Speaker 1: institutions and it worked, right? In the sense that we
28:40
Speaker 1: had the highest body in the judiciary power acting on
28:46
Speaker 1: this and investigating those issues, how they were spreading and
28:54
Speaker 1: taking harsh to prevent the impact of what everything was
29:02
Speaker 1: happening be even higher. For example, closing, requesting for the
29:08
Speaker 1: suppression of individual accounts on social media. And that's something
29:16
Speaker 1: that led to the blockage of X here in Brazil.
29:22
Speaker 1: Because what happened is that Elon Musk decided that he
29:29
Speaker 1: would not accept a sovereign decision from the Brazilian highest court.
29:38
Speaker 1: He just moved his policy team away from Brazil. There
29:43
Speaker 1: was no legal representation as a way clearly to escape
29:48
Speaker 1: Brazilian jurisdiction in a clearly politically motivated move. And what
29:55
Speaker 1: the court said is that you cannot do that. If
29:58
Speaker 1: you are operating in Brazil, you have to operate within
30:01
Speaker 1: our laws. So if you don't have a legal representation
30:06
Speaker 1: here in Brazil, and if you do not accept court
30:12
Speaker 1: orders related to several specific measures to mitigate the impact
30:17
Speaker 1: of this disinformation of what was happening, you could not operate.
30:23
Speaker 1: And he was not laughing. I mean... I think for,
30:27
Speaker 1: I don't know, 50 days, it took a while. And
30:31
Speaker 1: there was like a lot of support because you could
30:34
Speaker 1: imagine that this kind of decision is very helpful. You
30:37
Speaker 1: have tons, millions of social media users, including a lot
30:42
Speaker 1: of journalists, using those tools for their daily work. But
30:48
Speaker 1: the way it was done showed that there was at
30:52
Speaker 1: least an understanding from Brazilian society that it was a
30:58
Speaker 1: fair fight, that it was something legitimate. And you can
31:04
Speaker 1: go even backwards with the pandemic, right? I won't go
31:09
Speaker 1: all the way there, but the way that Bolsonaro governed
31:13
Speaker 1: during the pandemic was a big disaster for several reasons,
31:21
Speaker 1: but also in terms of access to reliable information on
31:27
Speaker 1: health issues, and the way that false information was spreading for, again,
31:36
Speaker 1: politically biased moves. And I think he had a bet
31:42
Speaker 1: in the sense that he thought that by going this way,
31:47
Speaker 1: he would show a different path than other global leaders
31:53
Speaker 1: But it was a disaster, a real big disaster. No surprise.
31:59
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of discussion around this time
32:02
Speaker 1: about disinformation as well. So it's a discussion that has
32:07
Speaker 1: been going on in Brazil on how public and democratic
32:12
Speaker 1: institutions have to respond to widespread disinformation strategy, especially those
32:20
Speaker 1: coming from the highest ranks ranking officials, is gain a
32:28
Speaker 1: lot of track and legitimacy.
32:30
Speaker 5: And I would dare even to say that we have
32:33
Speaker 5: now more than other countries an awareness about those issues where,
32:38
Speaker 5: for example, there was a very recent survey.
32:42
Speaker 1: I have to double check the numbers. But most what
32:45
Speaker 1: I know for sure is that most of Brazilian society,
32:49
Speaker 1: a survey showed is in favor of regulating social media.
32:57
Speaker 1: So you have this support, even, of course, if it's not,
33:03
Speaker 1: if you have clearly political groups which are very strong,
33:06
Speaker 1: and a lot of debate on how you do it.
33:09
Speaker 1: I think the major question is how you do it,
33:12
Speaker 1: because it's not the fact that you have to act...
33:18
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty clear here and from every perspective.
33:22
Speaker 1: What is more difficult is how you do it to
33:26
Speaker 1: avoid a very obvious trap where by doing this, you
33:34
Speaker 1: are creating a censorship mechanism and more control over those tools,
33:40
Speaker 1: those technologies. So this should be actually the discussion, how
33:45
Speaker 1: you do it and not if you have to do
33:47
Speaker 1: it or not. Uh, why it's important. I think it's,
33:51
Speaker 1: we are well over the time where those discussions, uh,
33:57
Speaker 1: should have asked. And now, I don't know. I really
34:01
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel that we are living parallel universes sometimes. Uh,
34:07
Speaker 1: when you see, for example, Trump's speech on, on, on
34:11
Speaker 1: the UN and Lula's speech in the UN, we feel
34:15
Speaker 1: that we are living in parallel universes. Uh, so, so.
34:20
Speaker 1: different periods of time. I think it's clear for there
34:24
Speaker 1: is a consensus among digital rights activists, organizations, even a
34:32
Speaker 1: part of mainstream progressive groups, NGOs working with freedom of expression,
34:40
Speaker 1: that you have to create mechanisms to improve democratic supervisions
34:48
Speaker 1: of how those emerging technologies, especially social media, are creating
34:54
Speaker 1: those rifts in our democratic systems.
34:59
Speaker 2: Artur, thank you so much. I just have two more
35:01
Speaker 2: really quick questions. And this is so important, this last
35:05
Speaker 2: point that you touched on, because particularly in the United States,
35:07
Speaker 2: even amongst folks on the left, because historically, obviously, censorship
35:12
Speaker 2: has been used against usually marginalized communities, minority communities. And
35:20
Speaker 2: so the discourse is always, well, once you start to say, well,
35:25
Speaker 2: you can't say this and these people can't say that, well,
35:28
Speaker 2: then that's going to be used against always, eventually it's
35:30
Speaker 2: going to be used against, and particularly against minority communities
35:33
Speaker 2: and marginalized communities.
35:35
Speaker 1: The people with the least.
35:36
Speaker 2: Amount of voice are the ones that are going to
35:37
Speaker 2: have their voice taken away completely. And yet this question,
35:41
Speaker 2: no one meant, like, I feel like this huge elephant
35:45
Speaker 2: in the room It's always this question of fake news.
35:48
Speaker 2: I can believe what I want to believe. You can
35:50
Speaker 2: believe what you want to believe. More or less, we
35:51
Speaker 2: can talk, but you still can't be spreading just complete
35:55
Speaker 2: disinformation and lies. And yet that's what we're seeing. And
35:58
Speaker 2: unless you actually take that on and say, okay, well,
36:02
Speaker 2: this is here. And how do we try and roll
36:04
Speaker 2: this back? But I feel like most, so many people
36:08
Speaker 2: or organizations... or individuals, it's just kind of give it, well, no,
36:12
Speaker 2: we don't want to do that because then that's stopping people.
36:14
Speaker 2: But no, there are lies. There are people trying to
36:16
Speaker 2: manipulate this. And so it's a huge, it's a complicated
36:21
Speaker 2: debate to ask that question of even how do we
36:23
Speaker 2: do this? But I think that is the question of saying, no,
36:26
Speaker 2: we absolutely have to. We can't even be discussing if
36:28
Speaker 2: we are going to or not. We need to be
36:30
Speaker 2: talking about how we do it in the most democratic
36:33
Speaker 2: way possible, or else we're just going to see more
36:35
Speaker 2: and more of our rights violated. willed away and more
36:38
Speaker 2: and more of our ability to communicate as a people,
36:43
Speaker 2: you know, whittled away.
36:44
Speaker 1: So it's crazy. Yeah. Like talking about more on journalism
36:52
Speaker 1: and how specifically on journalism, the way things are told nowadays,
37:02
Speaker 1: I mean, for in terms of how all this has
37:05
Speaker 1: been appropriated by this fear of censorship or by saying
37:13
Speaker 1: that any kind of regulation is censorship, is creating this
37:18
Speaker 1: environment of a crisis of trust and polluting democratic public debate,
37:29
Speaker 1: but also is creating something that science and journalism I
37:37
Speaker 1: put in the same level as any other opinion. So
37:41
Speaker 1: this is my opinion, right? So I can say it
37:44
Speaker 1: because it's my opinion. And if you have like a
37:48
Speaker 1: 30 pages special dossier done by one of the journalists
37:54
Speaker 1: working that biggest newsroom in the country, and you take
37:58
Speaker 1: this and you say, well, they can say whatever they want.
38:02
Speaker 1: That's my opinion. And I'm against this. Same thing with
38:07
Speaker 1: climate denialism, just to keep one specific issue related to science.
38:14
Speaker 1: So when you put everything, conspiracy theories, opinions, ideas, at
38:23
Speaker 1: the same level of other kinds of expressions, they should
38:32
Speaker 1: not be able to say, to disagree, of course, or
38:39
Speaker 1: to question. This is healthy for a democratic debate.
38:44
Speaker 6: But you cannot dismiss investigative journalistic piece on a very
38:51
Speaker 6: key issue and that had multiple sources done in journalistic processes.
39:00
Speaker 1: You have a process to doing journalism. You It's not
39:04
Speaker 1: chat GPT, you know, it's those investigations in the same
39:10
Speaker 1: way that science has its processes of verification, experimentation, peer review, etc.
39:18
Speaker 1: Journalism has its own. And if this is not recognized
39:24
Speaker 1: as a positive incentive a society to receive this information
39:31
Speaker 1: and to criticize or to discuss what is being said
39:36
Speaker 1: in a different way than just someone saying what they think,
39:41
Speaker 1: journalism have foundations in terms of what is being said.
39:47
Speaker 1: And ideas... can have more or less, opinions can have
39:52
Speaker 1: more or less, depending from if it's coming from someone
39:55
Speaker 1: that has studied all his life, all her life about
39:58
Speaker 1: a specific issue, and then is expressing, of course, an idea,
40:04
Speaker 1: a different idea or a position on this topic. But
40:09
Speaker 1: if we put everything at the same level, we won't
40:13
Speaker 1: have a real conversation. We will be just everyone saying
40:18
Speaker 1: what they want, And for democracy to work, we have
40:23
Speaker 1: to find common places. And those common places have to
40:27
Speaker 1: be based on some kind of logic or some kind
40:32
Speaker 1: of method or some kind of common ground.
40:36
Speaker 7: And so this is a problem right now with journalism
40:42
Speaker 7: because it's being treated as just another opinion.
40:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. And on our news feed on social media, it's
40:55
Speaker 1: being treated as just another opinion. Even sometimes even dismissed
41:02
Speaker 1: or the reach of news articles and links are having
41:07
Speaker 1: a worse reach than other kinds of videos posted by influencers.
41:15
Speaker 1: But there's no due prominence of journalistic content or scientific content.
41:22
Speaker 1: So the conversation is becoming more and more based on
41:28
Speaker 1: the rule of the stronger. If you appear to be
41:33
Speaker 1: stronger than others, your position can overlap all the others
41:42
Speaker 1: because you say so that's extremely for the kind of
41:49
Speaker 1: democracy we have been building. So this is a specific
41:54
Speaker 1: issue with journalism. And the other issue is media sustainability
42:00
Speaker 1: and news deserts and how those new technologies have shifted
42:08
Speaker 1: completely the business model of the media industry in just
42:14
Speaker 1: a few years. And it's creating more fusions, less pluralism.
42:23
Speaker 1: You have this illusion of pluralism, right? Because you feel
42:26
Speaker 1: that there is more people speaking than before, where you
42:29
Speaker 1: have the gatekeepers.
42:31
Speaker 3: And all this. But it's noise, right? So there's a
42:36
Speaker 3: lot of noise happening. And noise is not necessarily pluralism,
42:41
Speaker 3: because pluralism needs some kind of framework should be effective
42:47
Speaker 3: for a democratic debate. If it's just a bunch of
42:52
Speaker 3: people in a room saying what they think about the problem,
42:57
Speaker 3: not necessarily the best idea or the idea that has the.
43:00
Speaker 1: Stronger chance to work will win. So also this idea
43:07
Speaker 1: of a free market of ideas we don't live in
43:13
Speaker 1: a political vacuum. So a free market of ideas is
43:18
Speaker 1: completely dependent on the correlations of force between the different
43:24
Speaker 1: stakeholders in the ecosystem, the political landscape. You have a
43:30
Speaker 1: lot of social and economic inequalities. So talking about a
43:35
Speaker 1: free market of ideas with no kinds of balancing this
43:41
Speaker 1: just don't work because ideas will step on others anyway.
43:48
Speaker 1: When we talk about AI regulation or digital service acts
43:55
Speaker 1: to regulate the social media and the whole industry behind it,
44:01
Speaker 1: you need to have some kind of how you can
44:05
Speaker 1: create mechanisms to create financial compensation for media. And there
44:12
Speaker 1: are a lot of taxating profits from big tech revenue,
44:18
Speaker 1: advertisement revenue of big techs, for example, and creating a
44:21
Speaker 1: fund and this funding. I don't know. There are several
44:25
Speaker 1: ideas going on, bargaining codes. But the point is, if
44:31
Speaker 1: we do nothing, what we are seeing is that the
44:35
Speaker 1: economic pressure on journalism... on public interest journalism is becoming,
44:44
Speaker 1: is asphyxiating. And what we will see soon is an environment,
44:51
Speaker 1: a media landscape with a lot of concentration of power
44:56
Speaker 1: and local news markets disappearing and being replaced by, we
45:06
Speaker 1: don't really know, but what we've been seeing is that
45:10
Speaker 1: When a local news media disappear, there is no empty space.
45:16
Speaker 1: This space is immediately occupied by propaganda, by misinformation, by
45:24
Speaker 1: other interests. So preserving journalism, especially local journalism, is a
45:33
Speaker 1: democratic imperative. And we have to understand how we can
45:37
Speaker 1: do this when discussing democratic regulations for social media and AI.
45:46
Speaker 2: Artur, so great. My last really quick question is you
45:50
Speaker 2: mentioned toward the beginning something I thought was really important.
45:55
Speaker 2: I didn't want to forget it. Free speech being weaponized
45:58
Speaker 2: against press freedoms. Can you talk a little bit more
46:01
Speaker 2: about that? Where are we seeing that? What does that
46:03
Speaker 2: look like?
46:04
Speaker 1: We are seeing that on a daily basis in the U.S.,
46:08
Speaker 1: for sure. And I have a very specific example. When
46:15
Speaker 1: Trump wrote a letter to President Lula to justify the tariffs,
46:24
Speaker 1: the letter mentioned Bolsonaro, the prostitution of Bolsonaro in Brazil,
46:31
Speaker 1: mentioned big techs, Uh, and the fact that the rights
46:36
Speaker 1: of American citizens was being, was being violated by, by,
46:40
Speaker 1: by companies was violated by, by the judiciary in Brazil.
46:46
Speaker 1: And after, just after the letter itself, there was some
46:50
Speaker 1: kind of, I don't know the name of it, but, uh,
46:53
Speaker 1: an order where there were more explanations of the reasons.
46:59
Speaker 1: It was like a, a one and a half page document.
47:04
Speaker 1: And the expression like freedom of speech or free speech
47:07
Speaker 1: or freedom of expression or censorship was repeated at least
47:13
Speaker 1: 10 times in a letter basically saying that the U.S.
47:20
Speaker 1: was imposing tariffs on Brazil because Brazil was promoting censorship.
47:27
Speaker 1: So when I say that free speech is being weaponized
47:31
Speaker 1: against freedom of expression, In parts, it connects to this example,
47:37
Speaker 1: where you make yourself look like as a free press paladin,
47:45
Speaker 1: but actually what your distorted vision of free speech is
47:51
Speaker 1: doing is fragmenting the idea, the different ideas behind what
47:59
Speaker 1: freedom of expression really is, and mostly the social and
48:05
Speaker 1: collective dimension of freedom of expression. You are only saying
48:10
Speaker 1: that people should say whatever they want without any kind
48:14
Speaker 1: of interference. If that's the case, you are basically ignoring
48:21
Speaker 1: completely the fact that people live in a society, and
48:25
Speaker 1: part of the freedom of expression right is related to
48:31
Speaker 1: receive pluralistic, diverse, reliable information. When we see these kinds
48:39
Speaker 1: of marches that I've talked about in Brazil as well,
48:42
Speaker 1: where you say you are there to defend freedom of expression,
48:46
Speaker 1: but actually your enemy is press freedom, you are, again,
48:51
Speaker 1: weaponizing this idea because what you are really interested in
48:58
Speaker 1: is freedom. being able to express your ideas without any
49:05
Speaker 1: kind of repercussions, any kind of accountability, because it's a
49:10
Speaker 1: very empowering feeling. So I think what those leaders, Bolsonaro, Trump, Erdogan, Orbán,
49:22
Speaker 1: and others, Millet, have been doing, the media bashing and
49:30
Speaker 1: fueling general hostility towards journalism, and not just journalists, but journalism,
49:38
Speaker 1: like the idea of journalism, and again, not just against
49:42
Speaker 1: the press, but the idea really of journalism, is at
49:48
Speaker 1: the core of their political strategy. It's not isolated. It's
49:53
Speaker 1: not something that's part of their personality. It's really something
50:00
Speaker 1: that has the ability to keep their electoral bases very
50:09
Speaker 1: It's a very effective way to polarize public debate. And
50:17
Speaker 1: those leaders, they are dependent on polarizations. They cannot live,
50:25
Speaker 1: have a political career without these kinds of systematic polarization.
50:31
Speaker 1: And attacking the press systematically, the media institutions, journalism in
50:39
Speaker 1: general is very effective for using strategy and that's why
50:43
Speaker 1: they keep doing. In Argentina, for example, recently Miley said,
50:49
Speaker 1: the problem is we don't hate journalists enough. So this
50:54
Speaker 1: kind of ideas, Bukele, you know, in El Salvador, it's
51:00
Speaker 1: really at the core of the political strategy. So again, instrumentalizing,
51:07
Speaker 1: weaponizing free speech to erode press freedom, to have more
51:13
Speaker 1: control over the public debate and less scrutiny in society.
51:19
Speaker 1: It's much easier to kill the messenger than have to
51:24
Speaker 1: deal with whatever the report or the news article is discussing.
51:32
Speaker 2: Dude, incredible. Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate
51:35
Speaker 2: your time. I know we went over a little bit,
51:37
Speaker 2: but I really appreciate it.
51:39
Speaker 1: Thank you, Michael.
51:46
Speaker 7: Hi, folks.
51:47
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed our conversation. As I mentioned before,
51:50
Speaker 2: this is the third bonus episode of this series. There
51:54
Speaker 2: are more on the way. Please watch out for those
51:57
Speaker 2: in your feed. This is The Battle for Free Speech.
52:00
Speaker 2: This podcast is co-hosted by myself and Mark Steiner. This
52:04
Speaker 2: show is produced by The Real News. You can find
52:06
Speaker 2: out more about my work and this show on my Patreon.
52:10
Speaker 2: That's www.patreon.com forward slash MFOX. As always, please make sure
52:17
Speaker 2: to sign up for The Real News Network's newsletter so
52:19
Speaker 2: you never miss an episode. You can find that at therealnews.com.
52:24
Speaker 2: Thanks so much again for listening to this podcast.
52:27
Speaker 1: See you next time.