What good will come of Brazil’s biggest paper’s pro-democracy stand?

Amid rising institutional tensions in Brazil, with supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro taking to the streets to openly call for military intervention and the closure of Congress and the Supreme Court, the country’s most influential newspaper has taken a stand. Folha de S. Paulo, the paper with the biggest circulation in Brazil, launched a campaign last week to ‘safeguard democracy,’ publishing a wealth of educational material on the military dictatorship.

The paper’s motto, previously “A newspaper at the service of Brazil,” has been replaced by “A newspaper at the service of democracy,” which will remain in place until the 2022 election. These words appear on Folha’s masthead, which also now includes a yellow band, a reference to the popular movement in favor of direct presidential elections in 1985.

The basic idea behind the campaign is that half of the Brazilian population was born after 1985, when the last president of the military dictatorship left office. With creeping threats against the country’s democracy, Folha is attempting to show younger generations exactly what life under the military regime was like. “We have seen and will never forget the horrors of the dictatorship. And we will always defend democracy,” reads one of the campaign pieces. 

A nod to Bolsonaro?

Folha’s declaration doesn’t directly oppose President Jair Bolsonaro, who represents the current push against Brazilian democracy. The mentions of the head of state are careful and not explicit, while emphasizing that the country’s political system is facing its most significant stress test since the end of the dictatorship.

“The institutional role of a newspaper like Folha is to show in an educational and unbiased way what...