ÚLTIMA HORA NEWSPAPER

JORNAL ÚLTIMA HORA

Address: Rua Sotero dos Reis, 62, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Themes: Political-Cultural Resistance and Memory; Civil and Corporate Participation
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

Última Hora was an important newspaper that supported Jango in his candidacy and accompanied him throughout his administration. The military regime persecuted the periodical after the coup, destroying its headquarters and forcing Samuel Wainer, its founder and visionary editor, into exile. Experiencing censorship, it gradually adopted a more moderate stance, losing its place as an opposition newspaper in Brazilian media.

The newspaper printed its first edition in 1951. Aided by loans from important individuals and the Bank of Brazil, its founding was indirectly supported by Getúlio Vargas, who was searching for a source of government support in the press. The first edition even contained an editorial signed by Getúlio himself. Because of this, Última Hora ended up being a target of intense criticism from the opposition, especially in the figure of Carlos Lacerda and his newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa. Wainer and Lacerda squared off in notorious collisions, considered an important period in Brazilian press history.

Despite this, Samuel Wainer asserted that his publication sought to serve as a sort of popular and independent press, with news directed towards the masses. It distanced itself from the oligarchic press that mostly opposed Vargas. Starting in 1953, the periodical experienced widespread criticism and allegations of illicit transactions for the loans secured for its founding. This led to the establishment of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, although nothing of legal note was found. Última Hora had simultaneous distribution in several parts of Brazil, due to a national network that had been forming since the late 1950s. Wainer longed to create a national network of daily newspapers, even if they were to carry only one name, based on the templates that Assis Chateaubriand had already been producing with his Associated Dailies. This network included Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Niterói, Curitiba, Campinas, Santos, Bauru, and the ABC Region of São Paulo (Santo André, São Bernardo de Campo, and São Caetano).

Committed to the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), the newspaper supported João Goulart for vice president in the 1960 election, and opposed Jânio Quadros’s presidential campaign. However, the paper changed its position during his administration as Quadros’s foreign policy drew Brazil closer to socialist countries.

When Jânio Quadros resigned in August 1961, Última Hora supported João Goulart, and during his administration, remained favorable to the president’s position in regard to workers, broad-based reforms, and land reform initiatives. In 1963, which was already a politically polarized moment, the paper published news that attributed claims of a Communist offensive in Brazil to the conservative branches of the National Democratic Union (UDN), which were against the reforms and banded together to lead a coup against Jango. Última Hora was the only newspaper to support the sailors revolt in the Metalworkers’ Union and Jango’s intervention with regards to the event. It was seen as a newspaper that appealed to the common person, aligned itself closely with Jango, and sympathized with the left and the PTB.

Consequently, on April 1, 1964, the day of the military coup, the Última Hora headquarters were attacked, its windows broken, its company cars destroyed, and its printing presses rendered useless. The attack was led by by the Anti-Communist Movement (MAC), the same group that set the National Union of Students (UNE) building on fire. They forced open the garage door, hauling the vans onto the street, busting them up and lighting them on fire. Samuel Wainer was politically persecuted and fled to Europe, where he remained until 1967. Danton Jobim and Jânio de Freitas were two important journalists who directed the newspaper while Wainer was in exile.

During the military regime, the newspaper had to make concessions to survive, but even so it covered protests against the regime and reported on many of the violent acts that students suffered. As a result, the military tried to systematically boycott the newspaper by pressuring ad agencies to avoid the publication. During President Costa e Silva’s administration, the periodical denounced the torture of political prisoners and pitted itself against the liberalizing economic measures that benefitted foreign capital, reaching a significant print run.

Última Hora saw the implementation of the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) in 1968 as a victory of one military group over another. The newspaper published reports that analyzed the political situation and what would become of individual liberties in the country, reporting that the act marked a coup within a coup. After AI-5, the political pages of the newspaper lost their spot to culture, art, and cinema, and little by little, the newspaper lost the critical stance that had characterized it since its founding (Faber, 2010 p. 172). In fact, the culture section was always one of the most important and recognized features of the newspaper’s history, as it maintained celebrity columns written by figures such as Nelson Rodrigues (“Life As It Is”) and Chacrinha (“Chacrinha’s Newspaper”).

In 1971, already going through a financial crisis, Última Hora was sold to the Metropolitan Company, a group of contractors headed by Maurício Nunes de Alencar. The group had a political agenda and mounted a campaign for Mario Andreazza, at the time the minister of Transportation, to the Presidency of the Republic; the same group that had already acquired the Última Hora newspaper in 1969.

After being sold, Última Hora essentially became a different newspaper. With its newsroom closed, it was transferred to the headquarters of Correio da Manhã on Gomes Freire Street. Almost all of the employees, 86 people, were laid off in one fell swoop (Pinheiro Junior, 2011). The Metropolitan Company took the helm of Última Hora at the same time as it edited Correio da Manhã. With their improvised newsrooms, the two papers were gradually dismantled, both politically and editorially.

Última Hora ended up maintaining a position of timid support of the military government, of president Geisel’s policies against the so-called “hard line,” and of the process of political opening. It also supported the “April Package,” affirming that it would bring a renewing impulse to the nation and would allow Brazil to keep moving forward, which was consistent with its stance throughout the Geisel administration.

In this sense, Última Hora, along with Correio da Manhã, leased by the same group of contractors, gradually ceased to be newspapers critical towards the dictatorship and assumed a less hostile position, slowly approaching Governism. The newspaper considered expressing a merely informative and linear vision of events sufficient, as in 1981, during an attempted attack in downtown Rio. On that occasion, Última Hora did not present the stances that important organizations took on the event, such as the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), the Brazilian Press Association (ABI), and political parties. What is more, it kept itself from questioning the rigor of official investigations, refraining to ask if they would fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Police or the I Exército, a division of the Brazilian army.

The decline persisted, and in 1987 the newspaper circulated for only a part of the afternoon. Sales were bad, and the paper was sold. Later, in 1991, it declared bankruptcy with a debt of 450 million cruzeiros. Despite this, Última Hora went through a series of leasings. For example, the Paulista branch was leased to Grupo Folha in the 1960s and the Porto Alegre branch later turned into Zero Hora, one of the main daily newspapers in circulation in Brazil today.