Employees of the RIT (International Television Network), a station at the service of the missionary RR Soares, say they have received guidance to favor the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in programming.
They also claim to hear that, if Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) wins the election, they run a serious risk of being unemployed. His superiors, according to them, use the fake news that the PT would have plans to close churches to justify the possible mass dismissal. The channel is linked to the International Church of the Grace of God.
The complaints reached the Union of Journalists of São Paulo and were forwarded to the Public Electoral Ministry. THE Sheet talked to two professionals from the journalism nucleus who confirmed this situation. The newspaper also reached out to RIT to hear its version, but received no response.
One official said there are guidelines to put a positive spin on potentially harmful news for the president, who is trying to get reelected with the support of RR Soares and virtually all of Brazil’s top evangelical leadership.
For example, journalists couldn’t say that gasoline has increased for the tenth time in a row or that inflation is soaring. The information would have to be packaged to minimize electoral damage, they say. Better to say that the price of gasoline has risen after being stable for three months or that inflation has slowed down in recent days, and the drop was noticed in milk, oil and rice.
Regional Labor Prosecutor Adriane Reis de Araújo, from Coordigualdade (Coordination for the Promotion of Equality at Work), says that the veiled threat of unemployment if a candidate wins constitutes electoral harassment.
There is an asymmetrical relationship between management and subordinates, which weakens one side, he explains. Suggesting that the employee could lose their source of income if a candidate wins is “an action that seeks to induce, manipulate and generate an inequality in which you effectively drive the person’s vote,” she says.
The newspaper had access to messages in which RIT officials talk about the guidelines to benefit the president, and they are not always happy with them. There is an audio in which the head of journalism complains about the insistence on avoiding harmful news.
“I already told the people, let’s say that the koala died, that the koala gave another puppy at the zoo, and forget that there is a fire in the Amazon, killing Indians, you have to forget that Bolsonaro only talks shit. So that’s what it is. to put on? So that’s what you’ll get.”
Based in São Paulo, RIT operates as a public concession granted from Dourados (MS). On its website, it presents itself as a broadcaster “totally based on Christian values”, which “has always directed its programming to good news through its journalistic core”. According to the same text, it is available on 289 open channels across the country, on pay-TV operators and via internet streaming.
The day after the first round, a TV news program from the house showed the Bolsonarist bias adopted by the channel. He highlighted that the stock market rose by more than 5% and the dollar collapsed as a result, which put the president in a much more comfortable situation than expected. He also said that the government would advance the payment of Auxílio Brasil and the gas voucher, measures considered electoral, and highlighted the discrepancies between polls and Bolsonaro’s vote.
A political analyst said that “when these institutes make mistakes, they only make mistakes on one side”, echoing the Bolsonarista offensive to discredit research institutes. These attacks ignore that an electoral survey is never predisposed to advance the performance of candidates, but to record voting trends on the day it is carried out. They can change at the last minute, and there are extra factors in this equation, such as abstention.
The news is presented by Alexandre Giachetto, ex-Record and ex-SBT. Professionals credit the requests to manipulate the news in favor of Bolsonaro to him, editor-in-chief Hélio Jacintho and Edjail Kalled Adib Antonio, general director of the channel integrated to the neo-Pentecostal church of RR Soares.
The report sent a message to the three and was informed that Kalled had forwarded the reporter’s contact to the management of the station, which would respond. The report, however, did not receive a response until the publication of the text.
Above the trio is the missionary’s family, represented by his sons David Soares and Marcos Soares, elected federal deputies by the directorates of São Paulo and Rio do União Brasil.
In 2021, David, who is already a parliamentarian, presented the amendment that granted amnesty in taxes owed by churches, a billion-dollar debt. Data from the Attorney General’s Office showed at the time that Igreja da Graça owed around R$160 million.
The government’s economic team had recommended barring tax forgiveness. Bolsonaro said, at the time, that he was obliged to give the presidential veto to the proposal, otherwise he could be impeached for violating the Budget Guidelines and Fiscal Responsibility laws. In a nod to evangelical allies, he himself, however, encouraged Congress to override his veto, which it eventually did.
RIT’s favorable coverage of the Bolsonarista administration was already clear during the first year of the pandemic. Messages show that Giachetto said he did not want to see João Doria, who governed São Paulo and had become the president’s disaffection, “nor painted in gold” when an editor asked him about the best way to report on a meeting between Bolsonaro and leaders of state executives in the Southeast. .
The leadership would have advised against reporting on the construction of a hospital for those infected by Covid-19 in São Paulo. As a justification, he would have understood that it would not be a matter of public health, but marketing for the Doria administration. On the other hand, there would be recommendations to publish articles on chloroquine, a drug proven to be ineffective against the disease, but defended by Bolsonaro, and people cured by faith.
RR Soares is an ally of Bolsonaro and has also hosted, in worship, former minister Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), who is running for the government of São Paulo.
In August, the Sheet showed that the FIC (Fundação Internacional de Comunicação, media arm of the church of RR Soares) is the target of an action proposed by the Public Ministry of Labor, which brings accusations of psychological violence, discrimination by age, gender, race and sexual orientation, imposition of standards of beauty to employees and several other labor infractions.
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