Jornal Nacional

History

Jornal Nacional premiered on September 1, 1969, hosted by Hilton Gomes and Cid Moreira, the first Rio de Janeiro-produced newscast to be shown nationwide. Months later, the program featured the network's first female weekend presenter Márcia Mendes.

During the 1970s, Jornal Nacional preferred to emphasize international news and sports. The British documentary Beyond Citizen Kane suggests that this happened so that Globo wouldn't have to report the repression of the military dictatorship, which would have provided a substantial part of the network's growth. Despite this the program introduced new innovations (color broadcasts in 1970, live reports in 1977 and videotape footage in 1978).

Through the 1980s, three episodes involving the program caused controversy. In 1982, Jornal Nacional's coverage of the state elections of Rio de Janeiro was accused of participating in a plot to fraud the elections. According to former Rede Globo employee Roméro da Costa Machado, Leonel Brizola, a candidate of the opposition to the military regime, was a politician historically persecuted by Rede Globo owner Roberto Marinho. Two years later, the program was accused of omitting information about the Diretas Já, a popular campaign for the resuming of the direct election for president, near the end of dictatorship. Finally, in 1989, Jornal Nacional was accused of editing a presidential debate between runoff candidates Fernando Collor and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in order to favour Collor. This episode is also extensively debated on Beyond Citizen Kane.

In the 1990s, the quality of Rede Globo's journalism increased dramatically. Jornal Nacional presented its viewers breaking stories such as police brutality at favelas, an interview with Paulo César Farias when he was on the run from the law, corruption cases on the social security, the kicking of the saint incident among several others.

In recent days, after the death of Marinho, Rede Globo's journalism again declined in quality. Jornal Nacional has preferred to broadcast stories produced on the Southeast, in spite of Globo having affiliates in every Brazilian state. During the so-called Mensalão scandal and the 2006 general elections, Jornal Nacional was once again accused of airing anti-Lula biased news. Even worse, it lost great part of its viewership to Rede Record's Jornal da Record, which copied its style and also features former Jornal Nacional anchors, Celso Freitas and Marcos Hummel (as a relief presenter for Jornal da Record), and was known to be widely preferred as a more credible newscast than Jornal Nacional. On November 2005, host William Bonner caused controversy after he compared the average Jornal Nacional viewer with Homer Simpson, the ignorant main character of the American animated series The Simpsons.

As part of Rede Globo's 50th anniversary, Jornal Nacional will be given a brand new look and a brand new intro, however, the theme tune will remain unchanged. Between March 17 and April 27, 2015, the newscast aired on chroma key.

Hosts

After almost 40 years of broadcast, several reporters hosted Jornal Nacional. Hilton Gomes and Cid Moreira were the first hosts. In 1971, Sérgio Chapelin replaced Gomes and joined Moreira as the longest-running duo of Jornal Nacional hosts. In 1983, Chapelin was replaced by Celso Freitas. Chapelin returned in 1989, hosting again with Moreira until 1996. In that year, William Bonner and Lillian Witte Fibe began serving as hosts. From 1998 and prior to December 5, 2011, Witte Fibe was replaced by Bonner's wife, Fátima Bernardes. Bonner and Bernardes recently tied with Chapelin and Moreira as the longest-running duo of Jornal Nacional hosts. From October 31, 2014, the former host of Fantástico, Renata Vasconcellos replaced Patrícia Poeta (who also replaced Fátima) and joined Bonner as the current hosts of this programme.

Main presenters

Relief presenters

Former presenters

Criticism

Some of the news aired by Jornal Nacional are criticized for not representing all points of view, manipulating news and being sensationalist.