I never stopped being a journalist, even when I was a politician.
Ao longo de oito décadas, Francisco Pinto Balsemão teceu uma vida entre a tinta dos jornais e os corredores do poder, fundando o Expresso em 1973 e a SIC em 1992, enquanto servia como Primeiro-Ministro de Portugal entre 1981 e 1983. A sua trajetória é inseparável da própria história da democracia portuguesa — da censura salazarista à liberdade de imprensa conquistada após o 25 de Abril, da televisão estatal ao pluralismo mediático. Mais do que um empresário ou político, Balsemão permanece, acima de tudo, jornalista: alguém que acreditou que informar com rigor e independência é uma forma de servir a humanidade.
- Num país onde a imprensa era vigiada e controlada pelo regime, fundar um jornal independente em 1973 era um ato de coragem política tanto quanto empresarial.
- A passagem pela governação deixou marcas profundas — três anos e meio como Primeiro-Ministro que ele próprio descreveu como feridas — revelando o custo humano do exercício do poder.
- A reprivatização dos media nos anos 80 abriu uma janela de oportunidade que Balsemão soube aproveitar, construindo um grupo de comunicação que moldaria o panorama mediático português por gerações.
- O lançamento da SIC em 1992 quebrou o monopólio televisivo estatal e inaugurou uma nova era de pluralismo audiovisual em Portugal, expandindo-se até ao streaming com o Opto em 2020.
- Aos oitenta anos, Balsemão não mede o seu legado em riqueza ou influência, mas na pergunta silenciosa que todo o humanista acaba por fazer: deixei o mundo um pouco melhor do que o encontrei?
Francisco Pinto Balsemão nasceu em Lisboa a 1 de setembro de 1937 e estudou Direito, mas foi o jornalismo que definiu a sua identidade. Em 1963, entrou para o Diário Popular como secretário de redação, vivendo esses anos como uma pós-graduação prática na arte de recolher, verificar e contar a verdade. Foi nesse período que trouxe a Portugal figuras internacionais como o cirurgião Christian Barnard, meses após este realizar o primeiro transplante cardíaco do mundo.
A morte política de Salazar em 1968 despertou nele o que descreve como uma necessidade — talvez uma obrigação — de entrar na vida pública. Eleito deputado em 1969 pela chamada Ala Liberal, acumulou os dois papéis: parlamentar e jornalista. Em 1970, a par de Francisco Sá Carneiro, redigiu uma proposta de lei de imprensa que previa conselhos de redação com autoridade real. O regime rejeitou-a, mas o gesto revelava onde estavam as suas convicções.
Em janeiro de 1973, lançou o Expresso com capital próprio, determinado a provar que era possível fazer jornalismo inovador e independente em Portugal. Poucos anos depois, a Revolução de Abril transformaria o país — e o panorama mediático com ele. Balsemão serviu como Primeiro-Ministro entre 1981 e 1983, anos que mais tarde descreveria como feridas. Quando saiu do governo, regressou ao Expresso a precisar de descanso e de cura.
Nos anos 80, aproveitou a reprivatização dos media para adquirir A Capital, que dirigiu com sucesso até 1999, quando a cedeu graciosamente à sua direção e equipa. Mas o projeto que verdadeiramente o absorveu foi a televisão. A 6 de outubro de 1992, a SIC estreou-se como o primeiro canal privado de televisão em Portugal. O que começou como uma rede generalista cresceu até se tornar um grupo com canais temáticos e, em 2020, uma plataforma de streaming própria.
Hoje, nas suas oitavas décadas de vida, Balsemão guarda com orgulho a carteira de jornalista número dezoito. Atravessou o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial, a Guerra Fria, a chegada do homem à Lua e a revolução digital. Lutou pela entrada de Portugal na Comunidade Económica Europeia e pela adoção do euro. A sua medida de sucesso não é a fortuna nem o poder, mas a convicção tranquila de ter deixado o seu canto do mundo ligeiramente melhor do que o encontrou.
Francisco Pinto Balsemão was born on September 1, 1937, in Lisbon, delivered by cesarean section at a private clinic in the Amoreiras neighborhood. He studied law at the University of Lisbon's Faculty of Law, but his life would be defined not by courtrooms but by newsrooms and corridors of power—and the tension between them.
In 1963, at twenty-five years old, Balsemão took a position as editorial secretary at Diário Popular, a newspaper that was itself brand new. He describes those years as a postgraduate education in journalism. He wrote stories and conducted interviews. He traveled abroad on assignment, built networks of sources and contacts, and brought international figures to Portugal—including cardiac surgeon Christian Barnard in 1968, just months after performing the world's first successful heart transplant. The newspaper became his apprenticeship in how to gather, verify, and tell the truth.
But journalism alone did not contain his ambitions. When Salazar's political death came in 1968, Balsemão felt what he calls a necessity, perhaps an obligation, to enter politics. In 1969, he was elected to parliament as part of what became known as the Liberal Wing—a loose coalition of discontented deputies rather than a formal political organization. He held both roles simultaneously: deputy and newspaperman. In 1970, working with Francisco Sá Carneiro, he drafted a press law that would have created editorial councils with real authority. The proposal alarmed the regime and was rejected, but it signaled where his convictions lay.
In 1972, Balsemão began planning a new newspaper. Expresso launched in January 1973, funded partly by money he had made selling his stake in Diário Popular. At thirty-four, he had set out to prove to himself and the world that he could build something innovative in Portuguese journalism. In 1973, most major media outlets were controlled by proprietors close to the government. Expresso would be different.
Then came government service. He served as deputy minister under Sá Carneiro, then as prime minister from January 1981 to June 1983, also leading the Social Democratic Party from 1980 to 1983. After three and a half years in office—years he would later describe as wounding—he returned to Duque de Palmela, where Expresso's offices were located. He needed rest. He needed to heal.
The 1980s brought new opportunities. When the government reprivatized media that had been nationalized, Balsemão's company won a public tender to acquire A Capital newspaper in 1988. The paper performed well until November 1999, when its director, António Matos, proposed what he called a gentlemen's agreement: the ownership would transfer to Matos and the staff members who joined him, at no cost. Balsemão accepted. He also invested in Jornal da Região, though that venture did not sustain itself and was eventually sold.
From 1990 onward, his focus narrowed to a single project: television. On October 6, 1992, SIC launched as Portugal's first private television channel. What began as a single generalist network grew into a portfolio: SIC Notícias, SIC Radical, SIC Mulher, SIC Kids, SIC Caras, SIC Internacional, and later Opto, a streaming service launched in November 2020. He also organized the Bilderberg Group's plenary meeting in Portugal in 1999, an event that drew the country's heads of state and government.
Now in his eighties, Balsemão reflects on eight decades of transformation. He remembers the end of World War II and the Cold War. He watched Armstrong walk on the moon and the Curiosity rover traverse Mars. He benefited from the digital revolution and from Portugal's transition to democracy after April 25, 1974. He fought for Portugal's entry into the European Economic Community and the adoption of the euro. He holds professional press card number eighteen and still calls himself a journalist, a title he chose the way others choose medicine or engineering. His measure of success is not wealth or power but whether he has left the world, or at least the corner of it he inhabited, slightly better than he found it.
Citas Notables
The thread running through everything I have done is the struggle for freedom of expression—the right to inform and be informed.— Francisco Pinto Balsemão
I chose journalism the way others choose medicine or architecture. It was a vocation, not just a job.— Francisco Pinto Balsemão, in interview with Expresso, January 2023
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
You held power as prime minister while also building a newspaper empire. How did you keep those worlds from consuming each other?
They were never really separate. The newspaper came first, and it taught me how to listen, how to verify, how to think about what people needed to know. When I entered government, I carried that discipline with me. And when I left, I went back to what I understood.
But didn't your political enemies use your media ownership against you? Didn't people question whether you could be both?
Of course. That's the tension I lived in. But I never saw it as a conflict. The press law I tried to pass in 1970—that wasn't about protecting my interests. It was about protecting everyone's right to know. The newspaper, the television, the political work—they all pointed toward the same thing: a Portugal where people could speak freely.
You mention being wounded by politics, by your own party. What happened?
Three and a half years in office teaches you things about power that no amount of journalism can. You learn that good intentions collide with reality. You learn that your own party can turn on you. I needed to step back and remember why I had started in the first place.
And that's when you focused on SIC?
Yes. Television was the future. It could reach everyone. It could be independent. That became the work of my later years—building something that would outlast me, that would keep asking the questions that matter.
Do you think you succeeded?
I think I tried. Whether I succeeded—that's for others to judge. I can only say that I never stopped being a journalist, even when I was a politician. That was the thread running through everything.