Battle of the Pencil-Sharpened Tongues: Amorim Jabs Mainardi in Legal Fencing Match

Reinaldo Azevedo of Veja: Paragon of Ayn Randy self-reliance had magazine shot out from under him when it lost cronyist ads from public powers, critics charge

Comunique-se, a trade publication for the Brazilian media sector, reports: Paulo Henrique Amorim prevails in libel suit against Diogo Mainardi of Veja magazine (Editora Abril). Abril has not exhausted its appeals, however.

Em decisão julgada pela 5ª Câmara de Direito Privado do Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo nesta quarta-feira (06/08), Diogo Mainardi e a Editora Abril terão que pagar R$ 207.500,00 ao jornalista Paulo Henrique Amorim. Para o desembargador e relator do processo Oldemar Azevedo e outros dois juízes, o colunista da revista Veja se excedeu no texto publicado na edição da revista do dia 06/09/06.

[A Sao Paulo court] ruled on Wednesday that Diogo Mainardi and his employer, the Editora Abril, must pay R$207,500 to journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim. Judge Azevedo and two other magistrates found that the Veja columnist went too far in an article published on September 6, 2006.

Amorim is a Globo veteran now employed by TV Record as an interviewer and special assignments reporter — sort of a Morley Safer-like figure.

He moonlights as an opinion blogger on Conversa Afiada, with a cheerfully vulgar partisan slant to it (he regularly refers to Globo, Abril and other big media groups — though not Record, naturally — as the “PIG,” or “party of the coup-plotting press.”

Which I find kind of astonishing, and somewhat corrosive of TV Record journalism’s reputation for balanced, objective journalism.

Segundo Mainardi, Amorim está na fase descendente de sua carreira, e o iG o contratou por R$ 80 mil oriundos de fundos de pensão de empresas públicas.

According to Mainardi, Amorim’s career was in decline, and iG hired him for R$80,000 [a month?] using money from the pension funds of state-owned firms.

Comunique-se is a bit fuzzy on the details of the ruling here, but I think the issue was the factual accuracy of the statement, “Amorim received payola paid with public funds to make noise in favor of the government’s positions.”

Veja is fond of making this sort of charge.

Mainardi lost a libel suit against Mino Carta of CartaCapital magazine, for example — after charging the Veja founding editor’s CartaCapital with receiving publicly-funded payola to print pro-government propaganda.

In the case, Carta’s lawyers presented evidence that Veja received substantially more government advertising than CartaCapital in several instances.

Mainardi made the same charges against a small news agency owned by journalist Luis Nassif as well. See

• “We Are All Prostitutes”: Mainardi x Nassif

Veja‘s own Reinaldo Azevedo has been accused of the same sort of conduct, meanwhile: He edited Primeira Leitura magazine, bankrolled by the former federal communications minister, a ranking national Toucan (PSDB).

The publication was accused of receiving ad subsidies from state-owned companies in order to promote Toucan causes and policies, at a time when a Toucan controlled the state government (as the party still does, actually, although the current bald Toucan governor, Mr. Serra, and the previous bald Toucan governor, Geraldo “The FARC and the PT conspired to assassinate my state police” Alckmin, do not get along well, politically.)

The magazine failed — no ad sales, apart from steered ad buys by political cronies, critics charge — and Azevedo wound up as Veja‘s blogger in chief.

O colunista de Veja também escreveu que Amorim se engajou pessoalmente numa batalha comercial do “lulismo contra Daniel Dantas”. Segundo Mainardi, o dinheiro gasto para o iG manter a página de PHA era público e que o portal seguia uma linha editorial “petista”.

The columnist also wrote that Amorim took the side of “the forces of Lula” in a business dispute with Daniel Dantas. According to Mainardi, the money spent by iG to keep Amorim’s Web site on the air came from public sources, and the news portal followed a “pro-Workers’ Party” editorial line.

Amorim later had his contract with iG abruptly canceled. Fortunately, he did not quit his day job with TV Record.

Paulo Henrique Amorim move duas ações contra Mainardi pela mesma coluna, uma na esfera cível e outra na criminal. A juíza Michele Pupullin, do TJ-SP, absolveu Mainardi do processo movido na área criminal. Na esfera cível, Mainardi ganhou na primeira instância.

Amorim brought two law suits against Mainardi over the same column, one civil and the other criminal. Judge Pupullin of Sao Paulo absolved Mainardi of the criminal complaint. In the civil case, Mainardi prevailed in the lower court.

Cabe recurso ao Superior Tribunal de Justiça.

The case may be appealed to the federal STJ.