Historical Influence
If one man is to be pointed out as having formed the basis for a modern Brazilian press and mass culture, it has to be Francisco de Assis Chateaubriand Bandeira de Melo. His power over Brazilian media – as well as his lack of scruples, his upstart drive and gangster-like ethos – during his height from the 1920s and well into the '60s can be compared to that of William Randolph Hearst in the in USA. Chateaubriand was one of the most influential individuals in Brazilian history. He was known for having strong ties to the current leaders within both politics and economy. With a career as solicitor, journalist, media mogul, ambassador and senator, he often was the decisive drop on the scale of political campaigns and decisions. He was part of the creation of presidents and the undisputed ruler of Brazilian press. At the same time, he always lacked a clear ideological agenda – except for being a staunch partisan of the untrammeled Free Market and of consented submission to imperialist interests. At the end of his life – especially after a stroke in 1960, that left him speechless, using a wheelchair and communicating with others mostly by means of notes typed in a specially adapted typewriter – he had become a clownish shadow of himself, "a blackmailer who acted as an interloper in the power game of the ruling class". His media empire, after decades of personal mismanagement, quickly declined after his death. In the new ambience of a modernized Brazil, he was quickly dislocated by the new professionally managed, streamlined, more ideologically coherent and at the time military dictatorship-friendly Rede Globo.
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