"No joke: Brazil forbids election spoofing" by Bradley Brooks, Associated Press | August 18, 2010
RIO DE JANEIRO — The first wave of on-air political ads started yesterday, and Brazil’s comedians and satirists are planning to fight for their right to ridicule with protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities Sunday.
They call the antijoking law — which prohibits ridiculing candidates in the three months before elections — a relic of Brazil’s dictatorship that threatens free speech and a blight on the reputation of Latin America’s largest nation.
“Do you know of any other democracy in the world with rules like this?’’ said Marcelo Tas, the acerbic host of a weekly TV comedy show that skewers politicians and celebrities alike. “If you want to find a bigger joke, you would have to look to Monty Python.’’
Proponents say the restrictions keep candidates from being portrayed unfairly, help ensure a level playing field, and encourage candor by candidates.
The law has become a trending topic for Brazilian users of Twitter and has inspired newspaper and magazine columns as well as debates at public seminars.
Long before Stewart’s “The Daily Show,’’ Tas was working as a comedian-turned-reporter to needle politicians near the end of Brazil’s 1964-1985 dictatorship, bluntly calling out corrupt leaders when few others dared.
But 25 years after the return of democracy, his current show, “CQC,’’ is muted during the run-up to the election that will replace President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate....
TV and radio stations self-censor their material during elections.
The law holds that TV and radio programs cannot “use trickery, montages, or other features of audio or video in any way to degrade or ridicule a candidate, party, or coalition.’’
Because the Internet is not licensed by the government, it is not covered under the law. But if a TV or radio program were to ridicule a candidate online, a complaint could be judged by the supreme electoral court.
Fernando Neves, a former head of the electoral court, defended the law as fair-minded.
“A broadcaster cannot make jokes that make one candidate look bad,’’ he told the O Globo newspaper. “That’s the way it is. The law doesn’t permit it and I think it has its reason for being.’’--more--"
Certainly the Globe followed up and covered the protests:
"Gunmen invade luxury hotel briefly
RIO DE JANEIRO — Gunmen invaded a luxury hotel popular with foreign tourists and took 30 people hostage yesterday but within hours freed the captives and surrendered to police. The 10 who invaded the Intercontinental Hotel were part of a large group of heavily armed, suspected drug-gang members who had become embroiled in a shootout with police outside a slum near the upscale Sao Conrado neighborhood, police said."
Was that the hotel they were staying at?
