Leticia Kleim is a lawyer and a geographer from the University of São Paulo, and she’s not only worked at institutions dedicated to defending human rights—she’s also part of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji), where she serves as legal coordinator and leads projects such as the legal protection program for journalists and the judicial harassment monitor.
RFW: Leticia, welcome and thank you for joining us for this conversation. For our general audience from around the world, let’s talk about the organization you represent, Abraji, and what this organization means for press freedom in your country, Brazil.
Leticia Kliem: Thank you for having me. Abraji is the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism—an association that has been active in Brazil for over 20 years. It’s an association created by journalists for journalists. So, it was born out of a mobilization of journalists following the case of journalist Tim López, a reporter from Rio de Janeiro who was murdered by organized crime while he was working as an investigative journalist on issues related to drug trafficking in Rio. This was a very emblematic case for Brazil in 2002.
As a reaction to this case, a group of journalists came together with the aim of creating an association that could address both the training and improvement of the quality of investigative journalism, as well as provide support and protection so that this work remains possible. In other words, we need safe conditions for the practice of journalism in Brazil.
So, Abraji has three main pillars of the association’s work. One is the training of professionals. We organize an annual conference where nearly 2,000 people gather in São Paulo to discuss best practices, as well as the development of investigative journalism, data journalism, and so on. But we also have a pillar focused on access to information.
Brasília was very important in 2011 when our Freedom of Information Act was passed—it’s still in effect—and we have several projects related to access to information, because ultimately, this is what allows journalists to do their work.
And the final pillar is the protection and defense of the freedom of the press and the work of journalists and communicators.
And within this pillar, we work on advocacy to advance legal protection standards in Brazil, and to develop public policies with the executive and legislative branches on how to guarantee the necessary support and protection for journalists. But we also have these projects because we know that in Brazil, public authorities lack the capacity to respond to these threats.
Abraji also monitors what is happening in the country because we understand that it is very important to have data to be able to show that this is not isolated violence or something that happens in one part or another, but rather systematic violence that affects journalists and undermines society’s right to information. We monitor and also support journalists.
So, through this legal protection program and other projects we have—for example, a hub dedicated to the protection and safety of journalists—we track cases of journalists who are threatened, victims of legal proceedings, harassment, attacks on social media, physical assault, anything that can happen in our country related to the practice of journalism, and we also provide legal support so that these journalists can defend themselves in the judicial system and even in seeking measures against their aggressors if they are victims of, for example, digital attacks on social media and everything else.
Throughout the region we see an alarming intimidation against journalists, even from government officials and also from pressure groups in society, where there have been cases of violence, judicial harassment, and court rulings against journalists—and I’d like us to discuss the current context of press freedom in Brazil.
I think we’re now approaching a key point regarding the Brazilian context of violence against journalists. This is because the previous administration of Jair Bolsonaro’s federal government pursued a policy—a political agenda of repression and violence against journalists—as one of its tools to attack democracy. Between 2018, 2019, and 2022, we saw the highest numbers of violence against journalists in Brazil’s history. By 2022, for example, there were 557 reports of attacks on journalists and violations of press freedom.
Now we’re in the final year of President Lula’s term, who came after Bolsonaro. Lula arrived with a platform of protecting journalists and with some initiatives that expanded public participation in policies to monitor and support journalists.
I mean, the federal government itself isn’t currently the main aggressor against journalists as it was in the past.
What we’re seeing is a result of the Bolsonaro years and an extreme right that remains very strong in the country, where citizens themselves are taking it upon themselves to spread misinformation and act as aggressors against the press.
So, today we see many cases that are widespread, occurring throughout the country—not so much concentrated in one city or another—but rather, they’re everywhere, and they’re often carried out by non-state actors.
Of course, there are still some state actors, politicians, and political groups that have been—and continue to be—mobilizing and acting as spokespeople for violence and the discrediting of journalism, and this is getting stronger and stronger as we approach the elections we have this year in Brazil—presidential elections coming up in October 2026— but it starts much earlier, and what we always see during election periods is an increase in violence.
Journalists are particularly affected by this polarization and the rise of the far right, which has this policy of discrediting journalists and everything else. And in this context, what we call judicial harassment is also on the rise. These are lawsuits, legal actions, and judicial decisions against the practice of journalism.
Here at Abraji, we have a project called the Judicial Harassment Monitor. From 2008 through 2025, we recorded 784 legal proceedings that we classify as abusive—that is, unfounded lawsuits that utilized abusive mechanisms.
We have, for example, cases of journalists who were victims of 140 simultaneous legal proceedings at the same time for having made a criticism on social media. In some cases, for example, defendants were ordered to pay compensation for damages or compensation for moral damages by Supreme Court justices, for instance, for criticism or information of public interest.
So, we live in Brazil in a very complex context of judicial abuse that affects journalists at different levels, from the smallest towns to journalists who publish books about Supreme Court justices—and these people are politicians, businesspeople, or magistrates and judges who use these bold legal strategies to silence the practice of journalism, especially regarding information of public interest, information that is often critical.
And this information is very valuable and very important for society to receive in an election year like this one, isn’t it? Because that’s when the population will make its decision regarding democracy. So, we understand that this is a key moment because we’re in a critical context, and we know that the participation and actions of journalists at this time are very important for our democracy.
In a broader context what is your perspective of the freedom of the press in the region and neighboring countries like Argentina for instance
We see our colleagues in Argentina going through various things that we went through, for example, during the Bolsonaro years, there’s sort of a playbook among authoritarian regimes in the region on how to destroy democracies from within, I mean, using the very tools of democracy itself and attacking its foundations, because these are often elected regimes, by the people, in electoral processes that are marked by the dissemination of disinformation, the dissemination of hate speech, attacks on vulnerable groups—and this is often done by discrediting journalists.
Making the population distrust the information provided by the media, communicators, and journalists has this effect. It makes it easier to spread information and disinformation and to attack the democratic process. So, what we see in places like Argentina is somewhat similar to what we experienced in Brazil and even what we saw in the United States during Trump’s first term, and it concerns us because when these autocratic leaders come to power—like in Trump’s second term—they arrive with total power, so to speak, with more tools and more knowledge about the system, and better prepared to attack this very system, and that the protection of human rights will always be the first target of these leaders. That’s why we view this with great concern because we know that in the region, what affects one country can affect the entire region collectively, the impact of what we went through in Brazil affects the process in Argentina now, and in the same way, what happened—what is happening in Argentina—could end up affecting our electoral process this year and the future.
I think the trend we’re seeing in Latin America—regionally—isn’t a trend toward improving the protection of freedom of expression and freedom of the press; on the contrary, it’s a trend of undermining both those internal policies, protection for journalists and everything else, but also of multilateralism, of the possibility of cooperation among these countries to protect these rights—and this is very key, especially when we talk about Latin America’s interaction with other countries in the Global South.
Generally speaking especially if we’re looking at the challenges, for example, faced by journalists in the digital environment. This is something that can’t be resolved by just one country or another, it’s a global issue, and being able to unite and work together with the cooperation of the Global South would be very, very important.
One of the biggest scandals in media in the region is unfolding in Colombia where cases of sexual harassment have been detected in workplaces where women journalists have been harassed and subject to gender based violence. A case like that—how does it also affect the freedom of the press and freedom of expression within the media?
Yes, and this is a very serious case because, especially when we talk about attacks against journalists, we have to highlight the situation of women journalists. Because what we’ve seen is that women are often attacked from the outside, from outside the newsrooms, of their workplace, both for being journalists and for being women it’s a double dimension of the violence they often suffer, and it aims to silence them, in the public sphere, in public debate, and the influence of those diverse voices in the public sphere.
Cases like this—of sexual harassment or other gender-based violence against women journalists within their workplaces—are very serious because, in addition to having to deal with these violations, outside their workplace, these practices often directly affect these women’s work, they don’t have the basic conditions to do their jobs. A scandal has been uncovered regarding this, but there are also micro-violences that women suffer every day both inside and outside newsrooms, and I think our concern is that this drives women away from journalistic work, and this affects the journalistic content produced in these spaces, ultimately, the quality of information—if we talk a lot about the integrity of information—has to do with fact-checking, with uncovering and combating misinformation, but it also has to do with ensuring that different voices of women and the LGBT+ community can participate more in the production of information of public interest and that this information can reach the public.
This affects women’s participation in the public sphere, and yes, this is very serious, this is, as I mentioned, a double attack—not only on freedom of expression, but also on women’s rights.
Whenever we talk—or most of the time when we talk—about freedom of the press, we talk about the indices, we talk about threats and what’s affecting press freedom, but I also want to ask you where the hope lies in the practice of journalism and in the work that journalists do around the world, especially in the Latin American context.
Well, it’s always good to remind ourselves of this because, yes, the figures are scary, they can instill fear in us—and, well, I think that, for example, in Brazil we discuss some of the attacks, the rise in violence, how this violence remains a part of journalists’ daily lives, but I also think it’s important to talk about best practices, and examples of where we’ve achieved success in some initiatives through civil society participation and cooperation with public officials.
For example, April 7th was National Journalists’ Day in Brazil, and we had two very important achievements.
One is the approval of an investigative protocol for crimes against journalists—that is, we’re talking about clear parameters and protocols for security officials who will investigate crimes against journalists, so they can follow clear protocols to ensure the protection of journalists, effective investigative mechanisms, and, of course, a fight against impunity, which I believe is a challenge throughout our region. We did this based on the experience of other countries in the region that have also discussed protocols like this one.
And also on the same day, a Brazilian senator presented a bill that was developed from a text submitted by Abraji along with other journalist protection organizations, and this is also a regional initiative that has evolved into a model law for the protection of journalists—one that has been presented in Chile, in Argentina, in other countries in the region, and that we were able to present here in Brazil as well.
And I think those experiences highlight this hope, despite the hostile environments for the press and for civil society participation, we have resisted in many of our countries and, with great strength and collaboration, created initiatives that have been replicated and are now seen in several countries.
This power of collaboration and the ability to connect—if not the countries themselves, then the organizations—and to discuss these initiatives, I believe, is something that only strengthens journalists. And in the same way, I think it serves as an example to the whole world of how journalism is practiced: how journalism in Latin America has increasingly developed toward a collaborative model, because many of the threats that countries face come from actors—whether they’re companies or organized crime networks—that operate transnationally, and I’ve seen many, for a long time, initiatives of collaborative journalism between different countries, and I think this collaboration only strengthens journalism and sends a message to those in power and to the whole world that journalism is stronger and more connected across different countries; to civil society as well.
For more information on the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji) go to https://abraji.org.br/