Rede Globo - Controversy

Controversy

As a consequence of the size of its viewership, Rede Globo is in a position to exert significant influence over the outcome of a local or national election. In the 1989 presidential elections, Globo aired the final debate between Fernando Collor de Mello and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but edited the debate in such a way that Collor received considerably more air time than Lula, and juxtaposed some of Collor's more eloquent responses with some of Lula's less eloquent responses. Years later, the network publicly apologized for the incident, and electoral law was changed to prohibit networks from showing edited versions of political debates and enacted a law similar to the American equal-time rule. The theme was openly discussed in Jornal Nacional's official book, which was released in 2006.

In 1993 the British Channel 4 made a documentary, Beyond Citizen Kane, about the power and influence of the network in Brazil. The documentary had participations of great Brazilian political characters, including Leonel Brizola, who was also a political adversary of Rede Globo.

Globo has had a tempestuous history with the organization which owns the Rede Record TV network (that became in last years the Brazil's 2nd largest TV network, surpassing the SBT). Record's owners, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, were mired in controversy during the church's growth, including an incident in 1995, when Globo aired a tape which showed the church's founder, Edir Macedo, teaching other church officials how to manipulate church followers into giving more money to the church. The network was also the first to show the footage of what became known as the kicking of the saint incident.

On September 27, 2007, Rede Globo's rival, Rede Record, launched Brazil's first free-to-view 24-hour news channel on terrestrial television, Record News. Two days before the launch, the Vice-President of Organizações Globo, Evandro Guimarães, went to Brasilia to meet government officials, including the Communications Minister, Hélio Costa, accusing Record Network of owning two television networks, Rede Record and Record News, inside the city of São Paulo, in violation of Brazilian law. Record attacked Globo in an editorial in its national news broadcast, Jornal da Record, accusing Globo of trying to save its monopoly on media and news, and claimed that Globo was "afraid" of Record News. In its response, Record cited Globo's past controversies and the network's supportive relationship with Brazil's Military Dictatorship (1964-1985). In 2012, It was reported that Record News was almost going bankrupt.