Folha de S. Paulo

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

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. It has a partnership with Wikileaks to publish the United States diplomatic cables in the country, alongside O Globo.

Nevertheless, Folha's circulation has been on a sharp decline since the past decade. On 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.

History

Founded on February 19, 1921 by Olival Costa and Pedro Cunha as Folha da Noite (), 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 October 24, 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".

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.

Controversies

Convictions

Folha has been convicted in court several times for the content it has published. On 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, present at the moment, from the framework. On 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 has "abandoned his 'false morality' and went on to contradict the law" in order to please the federal government. Judge André Pinto, which heard the case, understood her statement as an allocation of misconduct and bias.

On 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'". On June 2010, the newspaper was ordered to pay a compensation of 18,000 reais (aroun 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 really belonged 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"

, references the famous photo of Vladimir Herzog hanged after torture. It says: "The military dictatorship in Brazil according to Folha de S. Paulo".]]

. The sign reads "Down with the pro-coup media".]]

On February 17, 2009, an editorial criticizing the Hugo Chávez administration in Venezuela referred to the Brazilian military dictatorship as a "ditabranda". Reactions to the usage of the term were almost immediate.

Aside from the newspaper's readership, the first people to condemn the usage of the term were University of São Paulo professors Maria Victória 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 debunk the letters sent by Benevides and Comparto, because they supposedly "have not until this day expressed their repudiation to left-wing dictatorships, such as the one still in power in Cuba". According to Folha de S. Paulo, their indignation was "cynical and deceitful".

The newspaper was heavily criticized on the internet and by other media outlets, such as small left-wing magazines Fórum, Caros Amigos (which published a cover story on the usage of the term), and Carta Capital. 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 dictatorship's repressive bodies. Folha de S. Paulo repelled itself from 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.

Dilma Rousseff's criminal file

On April 5, 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 plan of Rousseff's guerrilla group, the Vanguarda Armada Revolucionária Palmares, to kidnap Antônio Delfim Netto, then the Finance Minister. Rousseff later questioned the autenticy of the file, stating that "until now, it is not in any of the archives that we checked". The controversy regarding the file led Folha to admit that not only the file was not 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 autenticy could not be confirmed. The newspaper also stated that the image was received via e-mail.

Rape accusation against Lula

On November 27, 2010, Folha published an article by former Workers' Party member César Benjamin accusing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of attempting to rape another inmate while he was being held as a political prisoner in São Paulo. Lula himself would have told that to Benjamin during a meeting for his 1994 presidential campaign. According to filmmaker Sílvio Tendler, which was at the meeting, Lula's account was merely a joke. Advertiser Paulo de Tarso Santos, also present at the meeting, stated that he does not remember of such talk ever taking place. The accusation was also denied by José Maria de Almeida, which 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". Folha was criticized by media analysts, notably Alberto Dines, for publishing the article without checking its factuality first.

2010 World Cup ad

On June 29, 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 sizwe leaves the Cup. But not our hearts). 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. 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. Brazilian Twitter users launched the hashtag "Dilma Facts by Folha" to satirize the way the newspaper covered Rousseff's presidential candidacy.

Falha website

On September 30, 2010, an injunction given by the 29^th 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. 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. 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".

The case was highlighted in the website of the American technology magazine Wired. It was also commented by Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, during an interview to Folha's main competitor, O Estado de S. Paulo, on December 23, 2010. "The blog is not intended to be the newspaper and I think it must be released", he said.

See also

Grupo Folha

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

External links

Folha Online Mobile phone version Folha de S.Paulo (printed version)

English translations of Folha articles available at nonprofit WorldMeets.US

Category:Newspapers published in Brazil Category:Publications established in 1921