Media-savvy Barbosa now says the media is hindering him.
In a lecture he gave in France, the president of the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF), Joaquim Barbosa, said that the overexposure of ministers during live broadcasts of trials contaminates the court; he stated that the phenomenon of overexposure "has repercussions on the way certain ministers deliberate and on the content of some decisions"; contradictorily, the president of the STF was and is the greatest beneficiary of the overexposure during the trial of Criminal Action 470, which even projected him into a possible entry into political-electoral disputes.
247 - In a conference for around 200 jurists and academics in Paris, the president of the Supreme Federal Court, Minister Joaquim Barbosa, said this Friday (24) that the overexposure of ministers during live broadcasts contaminates the court's judgments. According to him, the law that created TV Justiça was a "democratic imperative", since the broadcasts reinforce transparency by allowing citizens to exercise more effective control over the court's activities, but this favors the lack of objectivity of the magistrates.
"Individuality prevails over collegiality, and we don't know exactly what grounds the decisions were based on," said Barbosa, according to a report in Folha de S. Paulo. Barbosa's lecture was about the influence of publicity on the rationality of decisions made by the Supreme Federal Court (STF). Without naming any colleagues, Joaquim Barbosa stated that the phenomenon of overexposure "has repercussions on how certain ministers deliberate and on the content of some decisions."
According to him, the problem is more acute in plenary sessions than in meetings of branch panels (which are not televised). Joaquim Barbosa also expressed discomfort with the tone of journalistic coverage of the court's activities. According to the president of the Supreme Federal Court, Brazilian media outlets prioritize coverage of the relationships between the justices.
"The court is in some ways a victim of its own success. If transparency is democratically desirable and essential, it needs to be combined with decency and moderation. The decency of journalists to focus on legal issues and not personal matters. And the moderation of the justices so that the collegial body triumphs over individuality," he stated.
Barbosa's statements sound contradictory, since he was the main beneficiary of the overexposure caused by the trial of Criminal Action 470, the mensalão scandal. Furthermore, it was Barbosa who was involved in controversial moments and heated discussions with other ministers, a situation he criticized in his lecture this Friday.