Analysis: As Brazil cracks down on fake news, Bolsonaro’s new move is straight out of Trump’s playbook –
President Jair Bolsonaro has accused the mainstream media of waging a campaign to discredit him, with a video on his personal Facebook page that he said was “written in the style of the New York times”. The video, made on a tablet computer, features comments made on Twitter during a broadcast by state television journalist, and is subtitled in Portuguese with a fake headline reading, “A fazenda se opõe aos avistamentos” (“Farmland Refuses to Answer to Surveillance”).
Bolsonaro spoke to broadcaster Globo in a video posted on his Facebook page late on Tuesday. In the video, he called the New York Times newspaper a “fake news”, and accused it of “false allegations” concerning his decision to suspend flights from Rio de Janeiro’s Charles de Gaulle airport. In reality, the decision involved a more complicated sequence of events.
The New York Times, the Intercept and other news organisations have reported that Bolsonaro ordered the suspension of the airport’s flights due to concerns that the flights would not have been able to accommodate Brazil’s growing number of migrants amid a sharp increase in crime in Rio. At the time, there were a number of incidents involving migrant labourers at the airport, most particularly a clash last weekend in which 22 people were injured in which migrants attacked Brazilian police officers who were trying to disperse the crowd.
The Guardian reported that security footage showed migrant labourers kicking and punching Brazilian police during the brawl, with some being taken to hospital as a result of the injuries.
Bolsonaro denied the video was an attempt to smear his government, but insisted that security was being beefed up following the latest aggression at the airport. Brazilian newspaper, Extra, reported that a number of migrants had been detained by the police after the clash.
Bolsonaro’s decision comes amid a rapid escalation in the