The journalist, lawyer and writer Jorge da Cunha Lima, former president of the Padre Anchieta Foundation and the Cásper Líbero Foundation, died in the early hours of this Wednesday (17), at the age of 90.
As a television executive, he was responsible for some of the main productions of TV Cultura and TV Gazeta between the 1980s and 2000s, in addition to having been state secretary of Culture and Communications of São Paulo and acting in the Diretas Já campaign.
Graduated in journalism and law from USP and business administration from FGV, Jorge da Cunha Lima was a humanist defender not only of democracy, but of access to culture and quality information.
As a lawyer, he participated in the act in Largo São Francisco of reading the Letter to Brazilians, in 1977, remembered in August 2022 in a new document in defense of the democratic state of law and Brazilian institutions.
He was coordinator of the Diretas Já campaign in São Paulo, stage of the main demonstrations in the 1980s for the return of direct voting to the Presidency of the Republic. At the time, during Franco Montoro’s administration, he was State Secretary of Communications and Culture, a period in which he realized the importance of educational and philanthropic TVs.
Between 1987 and 1989, when he took over the Cásper Líbero Foundation, he was responsible for creating TV Mix, a milestone in Brazilian television. With more than 8 hours of live broadcast, the program launched names such as Astrid Fontenelle, Serginho Groismann and Tadeu Jungle, in addition to the “bees”, reporter-videographers whose trademark was the agility to capture and produce content directly from the streets, among which Marcelo Tas stood out.
But it was at the head of Fundação Padre Anchieta, between June 1995 and June 2004, that Jorge da Cunha Lima made his greatest contribution to Brazilian television. First, by implementing the concept of public TV from the Federal Constitution of 1988. Then, by designing a new financing model that took TV Cultura to a new level, recognized in national and international awards received for journalistic productions, documentaries and the children’s programming.
UNESCO awarded Jorge da Cunha Lima the Prix Camera for the world’s greatest contribution to television journalistic communication. In Brazil, he received in 1996 the Order of Cultural Merit from the Ministry of Culture.
“His great contribution was to transform an important cultural TV into a relevant public TV around the world”, says Marco Antônio Coelho Filho, who was the director of journalism for the Gazeta e da Cultura under Jorge da Cunha Lima.
Before television, Jorge da Cunha Lima had directed the newspaper Última Hora, by Samuel Wainer, in which he also wrote the column Pauliceia Desvairada. As a writer and poet, he published Essay
General, Labor, Eve of Aquarius, Young K and the recent Tróia Canudos.
A widower, Jorge da Cunha Lima leaves three children and seven grandchildren.
Source: CNN Brasil
