Wikileaks points to a link between Globo journalists and the US.
According to WikiLeaks, William Waack (left), editor of Jornal da Globo, and Hélio Gurovitz (right), editor-in-chief of the newspaper Época, were informants for the American government during the 2010 election process; for William Waack, Dilma Rousseff was the least consistent candidate.
247 – On February 13, 2010, a classified memo was sent from the United States Embassy in Brasília to the State Department in Washington. The memorandum details conversations between American diplomats and two of the most experienced and well-placed Brazilian journalists: William Waack, editor of Jornal da Globo, and Hélio Gurovitz, editor-in-chief of Época magazine. What emerges from reading the documents, whose authenticity was confirmed by WikiLeaks, the controversial Julian Assange's publication, is that both Waack and Gurovitz were informants for the American government during the 2010 election process.
William Waack, a former war correspondent and award-winning journalist for his international coverage, gave an account of all the potential candidates emerging in early 2010, when it was clear that Lula could not run for a third term. According to him, Ciro Gomes would be the strongest candidate. Aécio Neves, the most charismatic. Serra, bland, but competent. And Dilma Rousseff? "The least consistent," Waack told his American interlocutors.
Hélio Gurovitz, who worked for Folha de S. Paulo and Exame before joining Época, brought in by Paulo Nogueira, was also interviewed by the Americans. He said that Brazil had a society similar to Chile's and that the country was ready to alternate parties in power. In other words, after eight years of Lula and the PT, it would be possible to return to the PSDB. And Chile had just elected the conservative Sebastian Piñera, ending the left-wing cycle of the so-called Concertación parties.
Both TV Globo and Época magazine barely disguised their political bias in 2010. In an interview on Jornal Nacional, William Bonner and Fátima Bernardes were even aggressive towards Dilma Rousseff, while they took a different stance towards José Serra. Another controversial episode was the alleged attack suffered by the PSDB candidate, supposedly with a "paper ball." Época, in turn, featured a cover highlighting the candidate's guerrilla-like side. It is unclear to what extent these positions were the result of the opinions of the journalists—collaborators, according to WikiLeaks—of the American embassy, or of the Marinho family.