Reporters Without Borders’ Stance on US-Brazil Policy Undermines Press Freedom
The U.S. might be taking an unprincipled and hypocritical stance on free speech, but that doesn't mean we should endorse what's happening in Brazil.
Last week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued one of the more remarkable statements I’ve seen from a group dedicated to press freedom. It criticized the Trump administration for imposing 50% tariffs on Brazil in response to what the U.S. called the Brazilian government and judiciary’s “unprecedented actions to tyrannically and arbitrarily coerce U.S. companies to censor political speech.”
To be clear, there are fair reasons to question the administration’s sincerity and its focus on Brazil. Why, for instance, isn’t the U.S. going after Russia, which has long banned U.S. tech companies for spreading “illegal content” and fined Google $360 million in 2022 and $78 million this year for failing to remove “prohibited material”? Meanwhile, the administration’s own record on speech and press freedom at home severely undermines its credibility when criticizing wrongdoings abroad.
But these were not RSF’s objections. Instead, one of the world’s best-known press-freedom organizations effectively endorsed Brazil’s approach:
“Using free speech as a pretext for trade sanctions is both cynical and misleading. Freedom of expression does not excuse disinformation, and it is not a shield for corporate influence. Brazil must not back off legitimate regulatory efforts designed to strengthen the right to reliable information and protect democratic debate online. Initiatives to counter disinformation, hate speech, and online harm are essential to protect journalism and democratic debate.”
According to RSF, prohibiting “disinformation” is not only legitimate but necessary—and it strengthens, rather than weakens, journalism and democratic debate. That’s an unusual stance for a press-freedom group.
International human-rights standards protect even false information absent narrow, specific harms and set a high bar for restricting “hate speech.” As then-UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and Opinion, David Kaye, stated in 2019:
"online ‘hate speech’, [is] a short-hand phrase that conventional international law does not define. The phrase’s vagueness can be abused to enable infringements on a wide range of lawful expression. Many governments use ‘hate speech,’ like ‘fake news,’ to attack political enemies, non-believers, dissenters and critics"
And as the current Special Rapporteur stated in 2021:
"the right to freedom of expression applies to all kinds of information and ideas, including those that may shock, offend or disturb, and irrespective of the truth or falsehood of the content. Under international human rights law, people have the right to express ill-founded opinions and statements or indulge in parody or satire if they so wish....Vague laws that confer excessive discretion can lead to arbitrary decision-making and are incompatible with article 19 (3) of the Covenant. Any limitation of disinformation must establish a close and concrete connection to the protection of one of the legitimate aims stated in article 19 (3). The prohibition of false information is not in itself a legitimate aim under international human rights law"
There’s a reason for this high bar: as of December 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists counts 41 journalists imprisoned around the world on “false information” charges—often for investigating government abuses or corruption. Vague bans on “hate speech” and “disinformation” are the favorite tools of illiberal governments from Turkey to Russia to Venezuela.
RSF would surely say it doesn’t endorse Putin, Erdoğan, or Maduro. But the logic is the same: once the state can police truth at scale, it will, and the impact will not be limited to the social media companies that press freedom groups like RSF think should be more thoroughly policed. In fact, as I argue in my recent dispatch from Brazil for Persuasion, Brazil is drifting toward top-down control of the digital public square, not away from it:
In 2019, then-Supreme Court President Dias Taffoli announced an investigation into fake news, putting Justice Alexandre de Moraes in charge. Moraes immediately started a crackdown, ordering the magazine Crusoé to take down an article linking the Chief Justice to corruption (but backing down when the magazine proved it accurate). He then escalated, ordering arrests, searches, and censorship of right-wing figures, often with flimsy legal and factual bases. Even the left was targeted when he ordered the blocking of communist social media accounts for calling him a “skinhead” and criticizing the Supreme Court.
More recently, a majority of the Supreme Court struck down parts of a law requiring a court order for internet intermediaries to remove user-generated content. This shield against intermediary liability once made Brazil a progressive trailblazer for internet freedom in Latin America. But now the floodgates have been opened wide for the government to require platforms to monitor and remove illegal content or face liability. This development is likely to incentivize platforms to remove even legal content that the government, or activist judges, flag as problematic.
Moraes’ aggressive approach has split Brazilian opinion—hailed by some as a defender of democracy, denounced by others as the censorial Grand Inquisitor of the public sphere. Yet his powers have only grown.
In 2022, in addition to being a justice of the Supreme Court, Moraes became President of Brazil’s Electoral Court, which expanded its powers to police political speech, ostensibly to stop “knowingly false or gravely decontextualized” election information. The Court suspended media outlets and censored speech that, in a democracy, should be debated and judged by voters—not suppressed by judges applying subjective, paternalistic standards.
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It is not only disinformation that is severely punished by Brazilian judges. The courts have also dramatically expanded the country’s laws against hate speech. Earlier this month, the prominent Brazilian standup comedian Leo Lins was sentenced to eight years in prison for racist, homophobic, and ableist hate speech in one of his routines. Meanwhile, two university employees—a janitor and an administrator—face up to five years in prison for hate speech after misgendering a transgender student and asking her to leave a women’s bathroom.
But despite the powerful role that Brazilian courts have carved out for themselves, criticizing or even discussing the role of Brazilian judges can be risky. In several cases, Supreme Court judges—including Moraes—have sued or initiated criminal proceedings against investigative journalists and vocal critics. One journalist was sued and fined for accurately reporting the salary of a judge. Considering how much power the judiciary wields in Brazilian politics, the simultaneous punishment and intimidation of public scrutiny is a deeply worrying step by this unelected branch of government.
When I spoke to journalists, editors, and publishers of various media outlets across the political spectrum, they all reported extensive self-censoring out of fear of being sued for civil or criminal defamation, or facing other consequences such as the blocking of social media accounts or the banning of articles and documentaries.
However frustrated RSF may be with social media, abandoning the very principles that protect the billions of ordinary people that use social media to share and access ideas —in favor of a narrow conception of “press freedom” that benefits traditional media—will (a) further deepen distrust in elite media institutions and (b) hand governments a ready-made pretext to target legacy outlets next.
For more on why all democracies and press freedom advocates should avoid calls to follow in Brazil’s footsteps, you can read my whole essay, “Don’t Resort to Censorship to Fight Populism,” over at Persuasion.
Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also a senior fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.