Folha de S. Paulo

Folha de S. Paulo is the daily newspaper of largest paid circulation in Brazil. Owned by the Frias family, it is described by Grupo Folha as “the most influent newspaper in Brazil” and “best seller newspaper in the country among national daily newspapers of general interest”.

Their editorial line is envisaged by Projeto Folha ('Folha Project'), which was implemented by Otávio Frias Filho in the early 1980s, a period that coincides with the moment when the publication became a reference on the national print media market.

The Frias family only acquired control over Folha da Manhã S.A. in August 1962, when the three Folha brands had already been circulating as a single newspaper called Folha de S. Paulo. Octávio Frias de Oliveira and his partner Carlos Caldeira Filho invited the scientist José Reis, one of the creators of SBPC (Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science), to occupy the position of chief editor. But the newspaper’s restructuring would happen under Cláudio Ábramo, who previously worked at O Estado de São Paulo. Abramo had worked with Frias at Transaco, a stock brokerage and analysis company that provided services to Folha da Manhã.

Folha de S. Paulo supported the group of events that led to the 1964 Military-Civilian Coup in Brazil, although later they sought to maintain an independent position in relation to the military regime. In 1974, in face of the so called economical “Brazilian miracle”, Folha de S. Paulo stated that the country was “skipping steps, finding shortcuts and entering, without making a fuss, the category of countries with well defined national goals […]. We could say we are today an unequally developed nation instead of an unequally impoverished nation […]. The imbalance in growth preferable to the imbalance in emaciation. The unequal distribution of wealth distribution in growth is much better than the equal distribution of chronic poverty” (3/31/1974).

Later, in 1977, the company decided to suspend all editorials and articles of Folha de S. Paulo as a protest against the imprisonment of journalist Lourenço Diaféria. He had written a chronicle that the military considered offensive of Duque de Caxias, patron of the Brazilian Army. The then Security Secretary of the state of São Paulo, colonel Antônio Erasmo Dias, claimed that the newspaper had “a lot of subversive elements” in their staff, and threatened to frame the company within the National Security Law. The answer from Octávio Frias de Oliveira, Octávio Frias Filho’s father, was to remove Cláudio Abramo from the position of chief editor putting Bóris Casoy in his place, and to remove the column “Jornal dos Jornais” ('Newspaper of the Newspapers'), written on Sundays by Alberto Dines.