MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New leader for O'Globo empire

Brazil's main media conglomerate O'Globo has a new leader, Roberto Irineu Marinho, the eldest son of Mr. Roberto Marinho who died last week at the age of 98 and had become one of the most influential men of the country.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva imposed a three days official mourning for the man who inherited a newly founded newspaper in 1925 and turned it into Brazil's most influential media consortium, particularly television in a country with a potential audience of 180 million people, with a high percentage of illiteracy.

O'Globo not only excels for professional journalism but also is possibly Latinamerica main soap opera program producer, so successful that many of them are regularly aired in Europe and Asia.

The 2,5 billion US dollars consortium includes newspapers, television stations, broadcasting, internet companies, cable operators, book printing, records and CDs. So competitive and influential is the O'Globo consortium in Brazil that it's a long accepted rule that any presidential hopeful had to come to terms with Mr. Marinho if he expected to have a chance. And a blessing from "Dr. Marinho" would certainly mean half the battle for any candidate given the extension of the O'Globo net.

Even current president Lula da Silva who had been fiercely criticized in his previous attempts to the Brazilian presidency by the O'Globo empire, finally came to an understanding with Dr. Marinho who gave him the full support of his media consortium. Apparently when Mr. Lula da Silva took office one of his first actions was to help sort out some of the financial difficulties the consortium was facing.

Mr. Marinho described journalism as an "exercise of audacity" and in his long career managed an extraordinary public standing becoming one of Brazil's reference powerhouses.

In diplomatic and business circles it's common to describe three powerhouses in Brazil, the Industry Confederation of Sao Paulo; CAM, Carlos Antonio Magallaes the powerful northeast leader that concentrates the political weight of the country's poorest region, and the O' Globo network of Dr. Marinho.