The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Fake News admits error and removes Fórum from list of sites with fake news.
The CPMF (a Brazilian tax) investigating fake news in the National Congress concluded that the channel 'Revista Fórum' should be excluded from the category of 'channel with disinformation behavior', after the magazine contested the concept and promoted a debate.
247 - The quote to Forum Magazine This was taken from a report produced at the request of the CPMI of Fake News, prepared by legislative consultants Cristiano Aguiar Lopes and Daniel Chamorro Petersen. According to Technical Information, released this Thursday (4), it was observed that all the contents of Fórum that appeared in fact-checking agencies “were rectified or taken off the air. Thus, we conclude that the 'Revista Fórum' channel should be excluded from the category 'channel with disinformation behavior'. Therefore, its reclassification will be carried out in the information annex and its removal from the list will be promoted”.
The report was compiled using data from the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom), under the Access to Information Law (LAI), and indicated 843 channels considered inappropriate that allegedly disseminated government advertising via Google, including fake news websites.
The inclusion of Fórum on this list, without any mention of the criteria that led to its inclusion, has caused astonishment. With 19 years of history, the publication's seriousness and social commitment are recognized in Brazil and Latin America. Fórum questioned the CPMI about the criteria adopted in the report, and the legislative consultants acknowledged the methodological error.
In the initial report, media outlets were considered if they had “three or more articles or content classified as false, distorted, or incorrect by the main fact-checking agencies, namely: Agência Lupa, Estadão Verifica, Comprova, Aos Fatos, Fato ou Fake, E-farsas, and Boatos.org.” However, of the content in which Fórum was cited by these agencies, all have been updated with information for readers. Fórum also has a channel for reporting errors and provides contact information on its website.
“In this review, we observed that the content cited in the fact-checks above has been corrected or removed from the air. Therefore, we conclude that the channel 'Revista Fórum' should be excluded from the category 'channel with misinformation behavior'. Consequently, it will be reclassified in the information appendix and removed from the list.”
Criteria for defining what constitutes "channels with misinformation behavior"
Legislative consultants argue for the need to refine the concept of "disinformation behavior," based on the debate generated by Fórum's challenge. "For behavior to be considered disinformation, we adopt the following additional criteria: the channel's failure to take corrective action, verify the information, or remove the contested content from the air by fact-checking agencies; the absence of institutional channels for receiving complaints and reviewing published information in cases of disputed articles; and the channel's lack of structure as a press organization, registered under a CNPJ (Brazilian tax ID) and whose purpose includes offering news services."
It is worth remembering that the report is not a final document of the Joint Parliamentary Inquiry Commission; it only serves to provide information to the Commission members in their parliamentary work.