‘My hands went cold’: Rio’s reporters risk death to reveal criminal ties between police, politicians and mafia

The killing of councillor Marielle Franco has inspired a generation of journalists to probe the city’s dangerous underworldRafael Soares’s phone rang and his blood froze. “Ronnie Lessa Googled you,” a federal police contact on the other end of the line told the Brazilian reporter as he stood in his newsroom one morning in 2019.Any Rio crime journalist worth their salt knew that being investigated by such a man was extremely bad news. Lessa was reputedly one of the city&rs