Press Freedom Advocates: Tornavoz’s Charlene Nagae on Journalism, Lawsuits and Solidarity in Brazil

Brazil’s media faces a paradox. Independent digital outlets are flourishing and diversifying coverage, even as journalists contend with legal harassment, coordinated online abuse, polarisation, and violence. In this edition of Press Freedom Advocates, Media Defence’s Communications Officer, Anoushka Schellekens, speaks with Charlene Miwa Nagae, Co-founder of Tornavoz, about the landscape, the threats, and how legal support and strategic litigation are key to ensuring this promising new wave of journalism can endure.

When Charlene Nagae attends journalism conferences in Brazil, as she often does, a familiar pattern emerges. Somewhere between the coffee queues and panel discussions, the casual conversation turns to lawsuits.

A journalist will mention one they’re facing. Another jumps in: “me too.” Someone else adds, “the same person sued me.” Soon the group is comparing numbers: “How many suits are you facing?”

“It’s like collecting lawsuits,” Nagae laughs, half in disbelief and half in frustration. Behind the wry humour lies a darker reality; powerful actors are driving many of these spurious cases with impunity. “We call them serial litigators,” she says.

This culture of legal harassment helped prompt Nagae to co-found Tornavoz. “All of us who founded Tornavoz are lawyers,” she explains. “We’d been defending freedom of expression for years when we started noticing more requests for pro bono support than we could handle individually. It became obvious that Brazil was in need for an organisation that could provide legal support with more structure.”

Founded in 2022 by lawyers Taís Gasparian, Clarissa Gross, Mônica Galvão, Laura Tkacz and Charlene Miwa Nagae, Tornavoz is a Brazilian nonprofit providing specialised legal defence to people sued for exercising their right to freedom of expression. In 2024, Tornavoz partnered with Media Defence to expand this support and strengthen press-freedom protections.

 The Bolsonaro Presidency and its aftermath

 Nagae sees two forces as having driven the surge in demand for legal support. First is the impact of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. Although Brazil made advances in press freedom over the past two decades, Bolsonaro’s government marked a sharp setback. His rhetoric fostered hostility toward the press. In 2020 alone, the second year if his presidency, attacks against journalists reportedly doubled. Bolsonaro and his allies routinely scapegoated the press for Brazil’s crises – even blaming journalists for the country’s COVID-19 death toll, declaring that “the press is responsible for… the loss of lives during the pandemic, a national disgrace.”

The 2022 election that ended Bolsonaro’s presidency was turbulent, fuelled by disinformation and deep polarisation. In January 2023, his supporters stormed Brasília in a failed coup attempt. “It was chaotic,” Nagae recalls. “During the elections, we witnessed not only the attacks linked to the coup, but also an explosion of violence against journalists across the country. It was overwhelming.”

The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva restored some stability. Brazil climbed 47 places in the RSF Press Freedom Index in two years. “But that doesn’t tell the full story,” Nagae cautions. “We no longer have a government openly hostile to journalists, but we are still dealing with the backlash. Lawsuits remain a powerful weapon, and the polarisation entrenched during those years has not gone away.”

 A vibrant but fragile media landscape

The second factor that Nagae identifies as driving up demand for their support is the explosion of independent digital outlets. Between 2023 and 2025, these initiatives are reported to have reduced news deserts by 7.7%. For a media landscape long marked by high concentration of ownership and a lack of coverage outside major cities, this represents a welcome shift.

“It’s exciting,” Nagae reflects. “These initiatives are bringing much-needed diversity to Brazil’s media, and they have sparked some of the boldest investigative reporting – uncovering corruption, human rights violations, environmental abuses, systemic racism and misogyny.”

But that vibrancy comes with fragility. Many of these outlets were born at a difficult time, when funding is scarce and long-term sustainability precarious. Unlike traditional media, they often lack financial security, legal safeguards, or political backing. That makes them especially vulnerable to lawsuits and harassment. “They’re often born from a desire to challenge mainstream narratives,” Nagae says. “But that very strength is what puts them most at risk of legal attacks.”

 Judicial harassment: a central threat

 This abusive tactic of using the courts to silence the press by burdening journalists and media outlets with costly and time-consuming legal battles has been intensifying in Brazil. Some reporters have faced more than 100 lawsuits filed by the same bad-faith actors.

“In today’s climate, even a single case can determine whether reporting ever reaches the public,” Nagae warns. “A journalist can be bankrupted by one lawsuit before it even goes to court, let alone dozens. That’s the reality. It is exhausting and deliberately intimidating.”

“Judicial harassment is also constantly evolving,” Nagae explains, pointing to a new scattershot tactic she has seen gaining ground. Instead of focusing on a single reporter or outlet, powerful politicians, businesspeople, and corporations sue anyone who engages with a story – even people who share critical posts on social media.

“Anyone who touches the story might get dragged in,” Nagae says. Large outlets can often defend themselves. Smaller ones, bloggers, academics, local creators, tiny startups, face an opaque and costly process. “Sometimes journalists come to us saying, ‘I know I’m being sued, but I don’t even know why.’ The system isn’t intuitive, and without affordable local legal support, they are often left completely in the dark.”

 Judicial harassment: A key ruling

 Strategic litigation is helping to shift the ground. In 2024, Brazil’s Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision, in cases brough by Abraji – the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association and ABI – the Brazilian Press Association, which held that flooding defendants with multiple lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions amounts to judicial harassment and allowed journalists to consolidate cases where they live.

“This was huge,” says Nagae. “Before, one journalist might be dragged into cases in ten far-flung states at once.” Early signs are encouraging, defence is easier to organise, and according to Nagae, there appear to have been no new filings using the mass-harassment tactic since the ruling. The decision appears to be acting as a deterrent.

The ruling also incorporated a standard akin the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sullivan standard, requiring proof of actual intent to harm or reckless disregard for the truth before a journalist can be punished.

Implementation remains the challenge. “The precedent exists,” Nagae notes, “however lower courts may dismiss it. The key now is proper implementation. If people see judges ignoring this ruling or applying it inconsistently, those mass lawsuits will start appearing again. We need this to become a genuinely useful tool – not just a symbolic one.”

 Criminal defamation: the chilling effect

 Another major hurdle Nagae would like to see addressed is criminal defamation. Nagae points to a recent case in Pará: a journalist in his sixties criticised a powerful politician’s moral authority and was convicted of criminal defamation. He avoided prison but was ordered to clean public bathrooms. “It was outrageous,” Nagae says. “For doing his job.”

She explains that while it’s rare for defamation cases to end in actual prison time in Brazil, punitive measures like in this case are far from unusual and that even the “threat of criminal prosecution, and the fear and exhaustion it brings, is often enough to stop a journalist from reporting.”

Globally, criminal defamation remains in nearly 80% of countries, despite it being widely opposed, most notably by the United Nations, the European Union (EU), and the Council of Europe, who have urged states to decriminalise defamation claims to protect the rights to freedom of speech and expression. “These laws aren’t about protecting reputations,” Nagae argues. “They are about intimidating critics and chilling legitimate speech”.

While the prospect of repealing criminal defamation still feels distant, Nagae argues that ensuring accessible, high-quality legal support is a much needed interim safeguard.

“When journalists know they’re not alone, when authorities know someone is watching, it changes the power dynamic. It doesn’t stop all the harassment, but it makes it harder for people in power to act with total impunity.”

Women at the forefront of change and under fire online

A defining feature of Brazil’s rise in independent digital media is the leadership of women journalists. “Many left traditional media to start something new,” Nagae says. “They’re leading some of the most innovative investigative outlets in the country”.

A recent study found that of 164 digital-native outlets, more than 80% had at least one woman on the founding team, and 44% were founded exclusively by women.
Globally, women remain underrepresented. In 2025 the Global Media Monitoring Project reported that only 26% of subjects and sources in 30,172 news stories were women, with little improvement since 2010.

In Brazil, women’s leadership is changing that narrative, yet risk is high. Women journalists are targeted both for who they are and for what they cover. Many are leading voices on sensitive topics – abortion, sexual violence, child abuse – that attract hostility and retaliation.

In addition to legal threats, women journalists are more likely to experience online abuse, which includes coordinated smear campaigns, threats of sexual violence, gendered attacks, doxxing, stalking, and intimidation. This gendered abuse aims to discredit women, silence their voices, and can have serious consequences, including leading to offline violence and forcing women out of the profession. The misogynistic attacks that became a hallmark of Bolsonaro’s presidency have only added fuel to the fire.

“Unfortunately, it is common to see women journalists shut down their social media under the weight of unmanageable threats and abuse,” Nagae says.

Case in point (anonymised):

One journalist is defending herself against multiple SLAPP cases while also on the receiving end of relentless online harassment campaign.

After reporting on a high-profile trial where a young woman was subjected to sexism and humiliation in court, the journalist faced severe backlash. In 2020, senior judicial figures filed defamation suits against her. She was sentenced to one year of detention and fined more than US$80,000.

She is appealing. Meanwhile, coordinated online abuse has taken a serious personal toll and has at times forced her to temporarily withdraw from social media when the attacks intensify. “She still faces a one-year prison sentence,” Nagae says. “Sometimes she can’t work, her health has suffered, and every time we speak publicly about her case, the online harassment begins again. It’s heartbreaking.”

Tornavoz has helped launch the Coalition in Defence of Journalism, formed by 11 organisations that work to defend freedom of the press and free speech. The coordinated efforts allow those organisations to boost the effects of their individual work. “Legal defence alone isn’t always enough,” Nagae says. “You need psychological support and public advocacy too.”

Geography and trust: reaching those most isolated

Brazil geography presents an additional challenge, “we’re talking about a country the size of Europe,” Nagae stresses. Outside São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, it can be hard to find lawyers who specialise in freedom-of-expression cases.

One priority has been building a national network of lawyers ready to defend journalists in court. “It’s still far too common,” Nagae notes, “that we only learn about cases once they’ve already advanced beyond the point of appeal or when the journalist has already served their sentence because they live remotely and didn’t know they could reach out.”

“By the time she found us, she was exhausted,” Nagae says. “She used to go to hearings alone. Judges didn’t even let her speak. The first time she walked into court with lawyers by her side, the judge was so surprised he asked if we were in the right hearing.”

Ramyria later told Tornavoz that “everything changed when she had a real defence,” Nagae recalls. “Even though she lost some cases, she felt heard. She could keep working. That’s impact too – but it doesn’t always show up in statistics.”

In Brazil’s interior, where news deserts already cover more than 20 million people, around 10% of the population, silencing a single local journalist can erase an entire community’s voice.

But there’s also a mistrust to overcome. “When you go to remote areas like the Amazon, people have seen many promises from outsiders go unfulfilled – whether from international organisations or even from us in the Southeast. So, you have to build trust long before anyone asks for help.”

“I went to a gathering of journalists in Belém,” Nagae recalls. “We talked for hours about their cases and fears. Months later, one of them reached out” and was able to ask for support he may otherwise not have known about.

Solidarity and partnership with Media Defence

These cases also highlight the power of solidarity and the impact that simply having access to a lawyer can make.

Nagae tells the story of a small digital outlet in Brazil’s northeast. They published an interview with a woman criticising local healthcare after her child was not properly seen by a doctor. The doctor sued.

“Thanks to our partnership we could provide a lawyer, and the coalition we work with issued a simple public note saying we were watching the case,” she recalls. “The day before the hearing, the doctor dropped the lawsuit. Just like that.”

“The journalist told us having both legal and public support changed everything,” she says. “It reminded us that even small acts of solidarity can shift the balance. The partnership helps us do that more often and on a greater scale.”

Looking ahead

 If you could change one thing to improve press freedom in Brazil, what would it be?

 “There are so many things that still need to improve, “Brazil needs stronger protections, better laws, and judges trained to understand press freedom. Too often, rulings spend five pages praising free speech, then, in one paragraph, say ‘but in this case there was abuse’ and impose fines or even a prison sentence. I see it all the time.”

 “I feel like I should have some glamorous or profound answer,” Nagae laughs, “but the truth is that if we can just keep doing what we’re doing, and do it well, that would already be a big step forward. As I mentioned earlier, we had a major victory at the Supreme Court, but that’s just one piece of the puzzle. We must keep using our voice to provoke public debate about the importance of free speech.”

“It’s easy to forget how fundamental freedom of expression is,” Nagae reflects. “But power hates transparency. That’s why journalists are always under attack. Our job is to make sure they’re never alone in that fight.”

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