Days before Brazilians go to the polls, one of the Amazon’s independent news outlets has made a decision it says it never wanted to make: it will not cover the election at all.
Tapajós de Fato, a journalism website based in the Amazonian state of Pará, announced that its team will sit out coverage of the 2026 general elections — the vote that will choose Brazil’s next president, state governors, members of the lower house and part of the senate, with the first round scheduled for 4 October. The reason, according to the site’s co-founder Marcos Wesley Pedroso, is simple and stark: “We’re afraid of dying and of putting our families’ safety at risk.”
The decision, first reported by a network of independent Amazonian media outlets and confirmed by The Guardian on 30 September 2026, has been described by Brazilian press-freedom organisations as a serious example of what happens when intimidation of journalists goes unanswered.
Why Tapajós de Fato stopped covering the election
Tapajós de Fato takes its name from the 1,238-mile (1,992km) Tapajós River, and for years it has reported from within the region on environmental and Indigenous rights violations, land disputes and pesticide contamination in Pará. That reporting, Pedroso believes, is what has made the outlet a target.
The site will remain online and will keep publishing stories on environmental issues. What it will avoid, for now, is anything to do with the election.
“Deciding not to cover the elections was not easy,” Pedroso said. “With a great deal of humility and responsibility, I know the role we play in educating and informing many people in the communities around us, but there was no other way. In the end, those are the people who lose out.”
He added that the outlet only decided to make the threats public after years of reporting them to the authorities without a single investigation producing results.
Years of threats: slashed tyres, a severed cat’s head and an ambush outside his home
The pattern of intimidation stretches back at least four years, to Brazil’s last presidential election. During that campaign, the tyres were slashed on the pickup truck Tapajós de Fato used for reporting. Days later, a cat’s severed head was left next to the car park, along with a note carrying Pedroso’s name and a warning that he would be next.
Last July, security cameras outside Pedroso’s house recorded cyclists circling the block, whistling and filming his car — until, minutes later, another car crashed into it. “I believe they wanted me to come outside so they could ambush me,” Pedroso said.
Police have not identified who was responsible for any of these incidents, nor established whether they are connected. Pedroso, however, sees them as part of a wider series of threats tied to the site’s reporting from the Amazon.
A surge in online attacks on Brazilian journalists
The pressure is not only physical. A coalition that includes the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism recorded 4,400 online attacks against journalists, media outlets and the press on X and Instagram in a two-week window — between 30 August and 12 September 2026 — alone. That figure represents a 67% increase compared with the previous two weeks.
Letícia Kleim, legal coordinator at the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, said the outlet’s withdrawal from election coverage reflects a broader problem. “It reflects the different forms of attempted censorship and silencing that journalists have to face in Brazil,” she said.
“Silencing the message by silencing the messenger affects not just their community, but democracy as a whole, which will no longer receive the valuable information they were providing by reporting on the Amazon from within the region.”
Because the campaign was still under way, Kleim said it was too early to say whether attacks had exceeded those of the previous election. But she pointed to the particularly hostile climate of four years ago, when the then president Jair Bolsonaro routinely attacked the media and made threatening remarks to reporters such as: “I’d like to smash your mouth.”
“His government made discrediting the press a priority at times; his family, supporters and politicians close to him embraced that agenda, and many continue with it,” Kleim said.
The Bolsonaro shadow over this election
Jair Bolsonaro cannot run this time. He is under house arrest, serving a sentence for attempting a coup after losing the 2022 election. But his political family remains at the centre of the race: his son, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is in a technical tie in the polls with the incumbent, leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
For Pedroso, that prospect is deeply unsettling. “The possibility of Flávio being elected worries me enormously,” he said.
He recalled that reporting was even more dangerous four years ago, especially in the Amazon, where Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous policies coincided with soaring deforestation, a gold rush into Indigenous lands and increased criminal activity.
The risks of that era were made brutally clear in 2022, when the British journalist Dom Phillips, who reported for The Guardian from Brazil, and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were ambushed and killed in the Amazon by men accused of links to a transnational criminal network exploiting an Indigenous territory.
Violence around election time is not new in Brazil. In 2022, a man was struck on the head with a piece of wood after saying he did not support Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election bid.
“We cannot normalise an Amazon where fear determines what can be reported”
Reaction to Tapajós de Fato’s decision has come from within the region itself. Comitê Chico Mendes, an Amazon-based NGO named after the environmentalist murdered in 1988, issued a statement deploring the threats against the outlet.
“We cannot normalise an Amazon where fear determines what can and cannot be reported,” the organisation said.
For the communities around the outlet, the immediate consequence is a gap in coverage. An independent newsroom that spent years documenting land disputes, pesticide contamination and violations of Indigenous rights will not be telling its readers what happens at the ballot box on 4 October — or in the contest between Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro that follows.
Whether the threats are ever investigated is another matter. Pedroso’s account of years of reports to the authorities without results suggests the burden of proof — and of safety — still falls on the journalists themselves. As he put it, the people who lose out are the ones the site exists to inform.
FAQ
Why is Tapajós de Fato not covering Brazil's 2026 election?
The Amazon-based news site decided to skip election coverage after years of threats against its journalists, including slashed tyres, a severed cat’s head left with a note naming co-founder Marcos Wesley Pedroso, and an incident outside his home in July 2026. Pedroso said the team was “afraid of dying and of putting our families’ safety at risk.”
When is Brazil's 2026 election?
The first round takes place on 4 October 2026. The vote will choose the next president, state governors, members of the lower house and part of the senate.
Will Tapajós de Fato stop publishing altogether?
No. The site will remain online and continue covering environmental issues, but it will avoid stories about the election.
Who is leading in the polls for Brazil's 2026 presidential election?
The far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, is in a technical tie in the polls with the incumbent leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.