President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva swore in, this Tuesday (14), the publicist Sidônio Palmeira, in the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom), in place of Paulo Pimenta. The ceremony took place at Palácio do Planalto and was attended by government ministers.
In his first speech as head of the department responsible for formulating and implementing the federal Executive Branch’s social communication and dissemination policy, Sidônio criticized the effects of misinformation on people’s perception of government actions.
“The information from the services does not reach the end. The population cannot see the government in its virtues. The lie in digital environments encouraged by the extreme right creates a smokescreen in real life, manipulates innocent people and threatens humanity”, said the minister.
Sidônio stated that freedom of expression was appropriated by sectors that promote hate speech, mischaracterizing its meaning. “We defend freedom of expression. We regret that extremism is distorting this concept to enable freedom of manipulation”, he emphasized.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva inaugurates Sidônio Palmeira as minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency – Photo: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil
By pointing out that communication is the guardian of democracy, Sidônio Palmeira defended the fight against misinformation, and said that his management will encourage regulatory processes, in addition to ensuring that the population has access to information.
The now minister once again criticized the recent changes announced by the multinational Metaa technology company that controls Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, in the content moderation policy of these social networks, which will facilitate the spread of hate speech and eliminate fact checking.
Sidônio takes over Secom in the middle of President Lula’s term, with the main challenge of improving the government’s political communication, in the last stage of the administration.
“Communication is at the heart of the world’s greatest challenges and our job is to understand it in its complexity and bring everyone together, since this challenge is not just Secom’s,” he said.
In his last speech at the head of Secom, Paulo Pimenta repeated his thanks to the president, narrated his career as a PT activist and parliamentarian and said he had recovered Secom’s structure. Pimenta also said that he had recovered a respectful relationship between the government, communication agencies and the press and projected success in his successor’s work.
“I am absolutely convinced that we are going to make a leap in quality in this work. I know Sidônio, the people who are coming here with him”, he stated.
