SBT report on increasing hunger in Bahia is from 2021, not 2024

A television report from the SBT channel about the increase in hunger in Bahia, broadcast more than two years ago, is circulating on social media as if it had been broadcast in January 2024. The allegation has already been shared more than 4 thousand times since the 31st of this year. month, but, in fact, the article was shown in September 2021, still during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro (PL). In the recording, residents of the Bahian hinterland reported the scarcity of food they were experiencing, worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Bahia 20 years of PT. The most miserable state in Brazil”says the phrase superimposed on videos shared on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Kwai and X.

The contents also display the date “30-01-2024” and an image of the bench of a journalistic program in which it is possible to identify the inscription “SBT Brazil”suggesting that the material was published by the news program in January 2024.

In the recording, which lasts a minute and a half, the journalist is heard Marcelo Torres stating: “It has increased the number of Brazilians who go hungry. In Bahia, which has the highest poverty rate in the country, four in ten people have a monthly income of less than R$428”.

Then, her bench colleague, Márcia Dantas, adds: “Unemployment and rising prices worsened the misery of those who already lived with so little, Marcelo. Many people have Bolsa Família money as their only source of income.”. Next, the article is shown with images.

Screenshot taken on March 21, 2024 of a post on TikTok (.)

A keyword search “Bahia” It is “poverty” on the SBT YouTube channel showed a video, published on September 14, 2021, entitled: “Bahia has the highest poverty rate in Brazil”.

The report, published more than two years ago, portrays how the covid-19 pandemic — experienced at that time — increased the number of Brazilians who were going hungry. “Unemployment, rising prices and interruption of economic activities have worsened the misery of many”says the video description on the platform.

From five seconds into the original recording, you can hear the same speech reproduced on social media. However, the viral content omits the previous excerpt in which the journalist states that the “covid-19 pandemic has increased the number of Brazilians going hungry”.

At the time, the country was presided over by Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the state of Bahia was under the command of governor Rui Costa (PT) — who is currently minister of the Civil House in Lula’s third term.

A survey carried out by the Zero Hunger Institute — commissioned by the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Combating Hunger and released on March 11, 2024 — showed that in the last quarter of 2023 Brazil had 20 million people in a situation of food insecurity serious.

This content was also verified by Aos Fatos.

Reference