Iara Lima

We are in 2026, another election year in Brazil. And, as happens with every election, we have already begun to see circulating on social networks and in family groups those messages that mix truth, half-truth, and invention. Edited videos, cut audio, suppressed contexts. None of this is new. What is new, perhaps, is the speed with which all of it reaches us.

But there is a story worth recalling at this moment. Not to revive ghosts, but to understand how the manipulation of information was not born now—it has deep roots in our democracy.

In 1989, Brazil was experiencing the first direct election for president since 1960. After more than two decades of military dictatorship, the country was finally returning to the polls to choose its president. Twenty-two candidates presented themselves. The two who went to the second round were Fernando Collor de Mello, a young governor of Alagoas who presented himself as a “hunter of maharajahs,” and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, union leader and founder of the Workers’ Party.

The campaign was marked by a novelty: television. Collor realized before the others the power of image. He refused to participate in the first-round debates, preferring to control his own narrative in free electoral propaganda. Meanwhile, Lula faced mostly unfavorable media coverage, being systematically associated with communism, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of that year.

On December 14, 1989, Collor and Lula faced each other in the last debate of the second round, broadcast live by Rede Globo. Two days before the election.

The following day, Jornal Nacional aired an edited version of the debate. And here is the central point: the edit was not neutral. Collor appeared attacking, Lula appeared defending himself. The speaking time granted to Collor was 3 minutes and 34 seconds. Lula’s was 2 minutes and 22 seconds. Lula’s right of reply, guaranteed in the live debate, simply disappeared in the edit.

The result we all know: Collor won by 53% to 47%. The Jornal Nacional edit is widely cited as one of the factors that influenced the electorate in those two days preceding the vote.

In 2015, during the celebrations of the network’s 50th anniversary, Globo revisited the episode. On the Memória Globo website, the link that gives access to the case is named “Error.” But in the accompanying text, the word “error” does not appear even once.

Instead, the network prefers terms like “controversy” and “questioning.” Anchor William Bonner, when presenting the case, stated that the edit “ended up also being eclipsed by a controversy that arose” a formulation that treats the episode as a spontaneous phenomenon, and not as the result of an editorial choice.

Globo acknowledges the episode, but does so in a way that minimizes its responsibility. The memory of what happened is, itself, an object of dispute.

Perhaps you are thinking: “but that was almost forty years ago.” And it is true. But the structure that allowed that manipulation remains present.

Today, manipulation does not come only from a TV network. It comes from groups on social networks, such as WhatsApp, YouTube channels, fake profiles on social media. But the logic is the same: select, edit, frame, repeat. Create a version of reality that presents itself as the only possible one.

The difference is that, in 1989, it was easier to identify the source of the manipulation. Today, the source has multiplied, fragmented, disguised itself. And that makes the work of discerning between fact and version much more difficult.

The 1989 election left us a lesson that remains current: democracy is not sustained by ballot boxes alone. It is sustained by quality information, by a plurality of voices, by the real possibility of confronting different versions of the same facts.

When a single group controls the narrative, democracy becomes more fragile. When we cannot trust even what we see, nor what we read, public debate degrades.

In 2026, more than ever, we need to remember that all information is a construction. That every edit is a choice.

And that the best defense against manipulation remains the same as always: distrust, compare, contextualize. Do not accept any version as definitive. Seek the sources.

The story of the editing of the 1989 debate is not just an episode from the past. It is a mirror that helps us see the present with more clarity.