The note led the professors to request, by way of their lawyers, the right to publish additional considerations, labeled as "right to response": "To take more than two weeks to recognize a grave editorial misstep (labeling the Brazilian military regime as a "ditabranda"), and to shift the blame for the incident onto the tenor of our criticism does not seem a behavior compatible with the ethics of journalism. We have always claimed, with no need of righteous lessons from no one else, that the victims of arbitrary regimes, both here and elsewhere, deserve the same protection and respect, no matter our ideological biases or personal preferences".