Folha de S.Paulo

Folha de S. Paulo
Format Broadsheet
Owner Grupo Folha
Editor Otavio Frias Filho
Founded 19 February 1921
Political alignment Self-declared neutral
Headquarters Alameda Barão de Limeira, 425
São Paulo, Brazil
Circulation 299,427
ISSN 1414-5723
Official website www.folha.com.br

Folha de S. Paulo, known simply as Folha (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈfoʎɐ], Sheet), is a Brazilian daily newspaper founded and continuously published in São Paulo since 19 February 1921. Owned by the Frias de Oliveira family since 1962, it has Brazil's largest circulation since 1986.[1] Alongside O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo, Folha is considered one of the most influential newspapers in the country.[2][3]

The newspaper is considered to have played a major role during the military dictatorship. With the return of press freedom, it became an important channel for public expression. Folha also had an important role during the impeachment of President Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992.[4] It has a partnership with Wikileaks to publish the United States diplomatic cables in the country, alongside O Globo.[5]

Nevertheless, Folha's circulation has been on a sharp decline since the past decade. In December 1998, it led the circulation of Brazilian newspapers with an estimated 513,000 copies printed daily. Ten years later, its circulation was estimated at 299,000 copies, which represents a decrease of 41%, although it stills leads the newspaper market, which has been facing a decline as a whole.[6]

Contents

History

Founded on 19 February 1921 by Olival Costa and Pedro Cunha as Folha da Noite (Evening paper), Folha de S. Paulo was bought on 1962 by businessmen Octavio Frias de Oliveira and Carlos Caldeira Filho. On 1925, a morning edition (Folha da Manhã) was released, while an afternoon edition (Folha da Tarde) came in 24 years later. These three separate editions, finally merged in 1960, giving birth to Folha de S. Paulo.

In 1930 it supported presidential candidate Júlio Prestes, therefore being pillaged and closed on 24 October 1930, when the 1930 Revolution triumphed. At that time, Folha de S. Paulo had on its staff the famous cartoonist Lelis Viana, popularly known as Juca Pato (Juca the Duck), a figure which always criticized the Liberal Alliance of Getúlio Vargas. The newspaper resumed operations in 1931 with new owners and a new editorial line toward the support of agriculture.

Unlike its main rival, O Estado de S. Paulo, which was even censored and intervened, Folha de S. Paulo initially supported the 1964 coup d'état against João Goulart and the military regime that followed until the government of Ernesto Geisel. In the early 1970s, this stance has led to a series of attacks against vehicles delivering Folha de S. Paulo, which were burned down by leftist resistance groups. According to Elio Gaspari, currently a columnist for Folha de S. Paulo, "cars of the company were borrowed to the DOI, which used them as coverage to transport prisoners".[7]

The rising of a renewed and engaged writing team, featuring prominent names such as Cláudio Abramo, Boris Casoy, Clóvis Rossi, and Jânio de Freitas, led a change in the editorial line of the newspaper, which in the 1980s was marked by immediate support to the Diretas Já movement. In the late 1980s, the newspaper was a pioneer in Brazil in the installation of computers in its newsroom. Later the newspaper dared to hire an ombudsman, something quite unusual for a major Brazilian newspaper then. It was so groundbreaking for its time that led to many clashes between then ombudsman Caio Tulio Costa, and Paulo Francis, which eventually moved to rival O Estado de S. Paulo. Since the 1980s, Folha de S. Paulo was also an early adopter of graphics and tables that explain, in a didactic manner, the details of breaking news and the context of the same.

In early 1990s, the newspaper began to invest in developing new products and supplements, such as Revista da Folha (Folha Magazine), Folhateen, and TV Folha. Marketed by a major advertising campaign, in which staff director Matins Suzuki Jr. himself announced the new features of the newspapers, Folha de S. Paulo went on to lead sales in São Paulo, surpassing O Estado de S. Paulo. A graphical reform in the mid-1990s and the launch of gifts such as the Atlas Folha and dictionaries strengthened the newspaper's leadership. In October 1996, a Sunday edition of Folha de S. Paulo sold as much as 489,000 copies in newsstands alone.

However, over a decade later, the scenario is quite adverse for the newspaper. Data from the Checked Circulation Institute (Instituto Verificador de Circulação – IVC) shows that Folha de S. Paulo ended the first trimester of 2009 selling a daily average of 298,351 copies, while in early 2000, that average was of 429,476 copies, which represents a decline of almost 50% in sales, although it remains the best-selling newspaper in the country.

Grupo Folha

After acquiring several other companies, the Folha Group became second only to the Organizações Globo media conglomerate in Brazil. Eventually the empire was passed on to Frias' children, Luiz and Otavio, which became president and editor of the newspaper, respectively. Today, the newspaper has an online edition, titled FolhaOnline, hosted on Latin America's largest Internet Service Provider, Universo Online, which is also part of the Folha conglomerate.[8]

Controversies

Convictions

Folha has been convicted in court several times for the content it has published. In August 2008, the newspaper was ordered by the justice to pay a compensation of 250,000 reais (around 145,000 U.S. dollars) to a lawyer for publishing a picture of him to illustrate a news story about a gay village in São Paulo, which could lead to the interpretation that he was gay. According to the plaintiff's defense, the picture was taken secretly when he was hugging a male friend. The photographer eliminated their wives from the photograph.

In March 2010, journalist Eliane Cantanhêde and Folha were ordered to pay 35,000 reais (around 20,500 U.S. dollars) to the judge Luiz Roberto Ayub as a compensation for moral damages. According to an article published by Cantanhêde, the judge "abandoned his 'false morality' and went on to contradict the law" in order to please the federal government. Judge André Pinto, who heard the case, understood her statement as an allegation of misconduct and bias.

In April 2010, the newspaper was ordered to pay a compensation of 50,000 reais (around 29,300 U.S. dollars) to blogger Luis Favre, former husband of Marta Suplicy. Folha had published, in 2001, an advertisement authored by journalist Claudio Humberto, in which Favre was defined as a "kind of left-wing swindler, a Trotskyist with unsurpassed mental confusion and God's teacher, of the 'know it all' type. With the talk of an encyclopedia salesman and ingratiating as a tango dancer, he is everything that the good Senator Suplicy is not: a 'dog'".

In June 2010, the newspaper was ordered to pay a compensation of 18,000 reais (around 10,500 U.S. dollars) to a woman cited in an article by journalist Elio Gaspari as a participant in a bomb attack against the U.S. consulate in São Paulo, which occurred in March 1968. Although the woman did belong to the guerrilla group Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (Revolutionary Popular Vanguard), she was out of the country at the time in which the incident took place. Judge Fausto Martin José Seabra, in his ruling, said that the newspaper had "abused its right to inform, attacking the honor and the image of the plaintiff by attributing to her the commission of a crime".

"Ditabranda"

On 17 February 2009, an editorial criticizing the Hugo Chávez administration in Venezuela referred to the earlier Brazilian military dictatorship as a "ditabranda" ("soft dictatorship"). Reactions to the usage of the term, with its implication that the dictatorship had not been harsh, were almost immediate.[9]

Aside from the newspaper's readership, the first people to condemn the usage of the term were University of São Paulo professors Maria Victoria Benevides and Fábio Konder Comparato. Folha answered that it "respects the opinion of readers that disagree with the usage of the term in the editorial to refer to the Brazilian military regime". However, it tried to dismiss the letters sent by Benevides and Comparato, claiming that they "have not yet expressed their repudiation of left-wing dictatorships, such as the one still in power in Cuba". According to Folha de S. Paulo, the professors' indignation was "cynical and deceitful".[10]

The newspaper was heavily criticized on the internet and by other media outlets, such as small left-wing magazines Fórum,[11] Caros Amigos (which published a cover story on the usage of the term),[12] and Carta Capital.[13] None of these critiques, however, had as much visibility as a news story titled "The ditabranda scandal" run by Rede Record on its Domingo Espetacular Sunday newsmagazine. It accused the Grupo Folha of maintaining liaisons with the former dictatorship's repressive bodies. Folha de S. Paulo rejected the accusations, which made Record run the story once again in its flagship newsprogram Jornal da Record and post it on its official YouTube channel.[14]

Dilma Rousseff's criminal file

On 5 April 2009, a few months after the "ditabranda" controversy, Folha published an alleged criminal file of Dilma Rousseff, at that time Chief of Staff of Brazil. The file classified her as a "terrorist" and "bank robber". The image of the file was placed near a story about an alleged 1968 plan of Rousseff's guerrilla group, the Vanguarda Armada Revolucionária Palmares, to kidnap Antônio Delfim Netto, who had been the Finance Minister of the military regime. Rousseff questioned the authenticity of the file, stating that it was "not in any of the archives that we have checked so far" and that it was a recent and manipulated artifact.[15] The controversy regarding the file led Folha to admit that not only had the file not been obtained from the archives of DOPS, the political police of the military dictatorship – in contrast to what had been previously stated – but also that the file's authenticity could not be confirmed.[16] The newspaper also stated that the image was received via e-mail.[16] The file can be found on several far right-wing websites supportive of the dictatorship.[17]

Rape accusation against Lula

On 27 November 2010, Folha published an article by former Workers' Party member César Benjamin accusing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of having told Benjamin, during a meeting for Lula's 1994 presidential campaign, that Lula had attempted to rape another inmate while he was being held as a political prisoner in São Paulo.[18] According to filmmaker Sílvio Tendler, who was at the meeting, Lula's account was merely a joke.[19] Advertiser Paulo de Tarso Santos, also present at the meeting, stated that he does not remember such talk ever taking place.[20] The accusation was also denied by José Maria de Almeida, who had been incarcerated alongside Lula in 1980. He declared to "have reasons to attack Lula. His government is a tragedy for the working class. But what was written never happened".[20] The allegedly raped inmate later declared to Veja that he would not speak to the press, and that "whoever made the accusation should prove it".[21] Folha was criticized by media analysts, notably Alberto Dines, for publishing the article without checking its factuality first.[22][23]

2010 World Cup ad

On 29 June 2010, Folha mistakenly published an ad by Extra Hipermercados (owned by Grupo Pão de Açúcar, one of the sponsors of the Brazil national football team), which read: "A I qembu le sizwe sai do Mundial. Não do coração da gente" (The I qembu le sizwe1 leaves the Cup. But not our hearts).[24] The ad suggested Brazil was out of the World Cup, when it had actually defeated Chile 3-0 and advanced to the next stage. According to Folha, there was a mistake during the selection of the material to be published.[24]

2010 elections

On 18 July 2010, Folha declared in an article that it would not support any candidancy, and that it would make a neutral coverage of the 2010 Brazilian election-related facts. The text was received with criticism by analysts. Folha was instead perceived to support the José Serra candidacy.[25] On September, Folha's ombudswoman, Suzana Singer, harshly criticized the newspaper. She picked pieces of e-mails she had received from Folha readers mocking the paper's pretensions of impartiality. According to her, Folha was "dedicat[ing] itself to turn the life and work [of Ms. Rousseff] upside down" and report on the collected information in a partial manner.[26] Brazilian Twitter users launched the hashtag "Dilma Facts by Folha" to satirize the way the newspaper covered Rousseff's presidential candidacy.[27]

Falha website

On 30 September 2010, an injunction given by the 29th Civil Court of São Paulo Court at the request of Folha's legal team closed down the website Falha de S. Paulo (Flaw of S. Paulo), which satirized what they perceived as the newspaper's biased news in favor of Serra.[28] The measure was seen as a form of censorship by the independent media and other bloggers, which launched the Censura eu, Folha (Censor me, Folha) campaign.[29] Folha's position was also poorly received by Reporters Without Borders, which said the newspaper was incurring in a "new form of censorship".

According to Folha's legal team, they requested the injunction to defend the newspaper's trademark from misuse, because the similarity of names could cause "an explicit and intentional confusion" between the newspaper and the website among the readers of the latter. As a matter of fact, the judge which gave the injunction closing down the website said that his decision was not based "in the satire, which is not forbidden, but on the use of a logo very similar to the one used by the plaintiff".[28] The Falha website currently displays messages of support by famous people, such as former Culture Minister Gilberto Gil, to whom Folha should sue Caetano Veloso, which created the term Falha de S. Paulo to refer to the newspaper.[30]

The case was highlighted in the website of the American technology magazine Wired.[31] It was also commented by Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, during an interview to Folha's main competitor, O Estado de S. Paulo, on 23 December 2010.[32] "The blog is not intended to be the newspaper and I think it must be released", he said.[32] The case was also highlighted by Andrew Downie in a Financial Times blog. According to him, Folha's response to Falha is "in keeping with its reputation as somewhat humorless", adding that the case has cost a damage "to its reputation as one of the progressive forces in Brazilian journalism".[33]

See also

Brazil portal
Journalism portal


Notes

1^ According to the ad itself, "I qembu le sizwe" means "selection" in the African language Zulu. The Brazilian team is widely known in Brazil simply as "Seleção" (Selection).

References

  1. ^ Patury, Felipe. "Jornal cresce e se torna grupo de mídia" (in Portuguese). http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/80anos/grupo_folha.shtml. Retrieved 27 July 2010. 
  2. ^ Motter, Paulino. The role of the media in educational policy formation and legitimation in Brazil: 1995–2008 University of Wisconsin–Madison. 2008
  3. ^ Octavio Frias de Oliveira Today's largest circulation daily (English)
  4. ^ Folha History 1991, President Collor impeachment. (English)
  5. ^ [1]
  6. ^ Jornal da Record: A Folha de SP não reconhece seu erro.
  7. ^ GASPARI, Elio. Ditadura Escancarada: As Ilusões Armadas, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1st edition, 2002, p. 395.
  8. ^ More History about Folha de S.Paulo. In Portuguese
  9. ^ (Portuguese) Editorial. "Limites a Chávez". Folha de S. Paulo. 17 February 2009. (Posted at NucleodeNoticias.com.br on 27 February 2009).
  10. ^ (Portuguese) FEIL, Cristóvão. "A Folha e a ditabranda". Vi O Mundo blog by Luis Carlos Azenha, 21 February 2009.
  11. ^ (Portuguese) RAMOS, Camila Souza (interview with Beatriz Kushnir). "A “ditabranda” e os interesses comerciais da Folha". Revista Fórum. 20 March 2009.
  12. ^ (Portuguese) CINTRA, André. "De caso com a Ditabranda". Caros Amigos. April 2009.
  13. ^ (Portuguese) BENEVIDES, Maria Victoria de Mesquita. "'Ditabranda' para quem?". Carta Capital. 27 February 2009.
  14. ^ (Portuguese) "O escândalo da ditabranda" on Rede Record's official YouTube channel. Posted on 7 April 2009.
  15. ^ Peixoto, Paulo (18 April 2009). "Dilma questiona autenticidade de ficha sobre sua prisão pelo regime militar" (in Portuguese). Folha.com. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u552822.shtml. Retrieved 21 July 2010. 
  16. ^ a b "Autenticidade de ficha de Dilma não é provada" (in Portuguese). Folha Online. 25 April 2009. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u556855.shtml. Retrieved 21 July 2010. 
  17. ^ Magalhães, Luiz Antonio. "Folha publicou ficha falsa de Dilma". Observatório da Imprensa. 25 April 2009.
  18. ^ [2]
  19. ^ [3]
  20. ^ a b [4]
  21. ^ [5]
  22. ^ [6]
  23. ^ [7]
  24. ^ a b "Seleção brasileira é 'eliminada' em anúncio da rede Extra" (in Portuguese). G1. 29 June 2010. http://g1.globo.com/economia-e-negocios/noticia/2010/06/selecao-e-eliminada-em-anuncio-da-rede-extra.html. Retrieved 21 July 2010. 
  25. ^ "Folha reafirma princípios editoriais" (in Portuguese). Folha.com. 18 July 2010. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/768533-folha-reafirma-principios-editoriais.shtml. Retrieved 21 July 2010. 
  26. ^ (Portuguese) "Ombudsman da Folha de S.Paulo acusa jornal de ser parcial na cobertura eleitoral". R7. 12 September 2010. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  27. ^ (Portuguese) "Brincadeira no Twitter critica manchete da Folha sobre Dilma". A Tarde. 5 September 2010. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  28. ^ a b (Portuguese) "Folha de S.Paulo tira do ar, na Justiça, site que a criticava". R7. 5 October 2010.
  29. ^ [8]
  30. ^ [9]
  31. ^ [10]
  32. ^ a b Vasconcelos, Izabela. "Fundador do WikiLeaks defende liberação do blog Falha de S. Paulo". Comunique-se. 23 December 2010. Retrieved 23 December 2010.
  33. ^ [11]

External links