Though Pinto is fairly well known in the eastern Amazon area, few Brazilians in the mega-cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, hundreds of miles to the south, would recognize his name. Despite his many professional contacts, he's an autodidactic one-man operation, reliant above all on his wits and stamina.
Professionally, he combines scientific scrutiny of measurable facts with an equal passion for human dynamics (he studied sociology at university). He eschews tape recorders and computers, relying instead on handwritten notes and his prodigious memory. He refuses to carry a cellphone because they "brutalize" people.
To cope with stress, he practices breathing exercises. "I'm a very controlled person," he says, "but when I'm alone I explode, I punch the wall, I yell and I dance. Especially with music. Music is my therapy." Mozart's Requiem is a particular favorite.
One imagines that Pinto had the Mozart cranked full-blast three years ago, when he was physically attacked by the editorial director of O Liberal newspaper, Ronaldo Maiorana, and two bodyguards while lunching with friends. According to Pinto, Maiorana punched him and after Pinto fell to the ground the three men repeatedly kicked him. "If I don't kill you now, I'll kill you later!" Maiorana yelled. The attack came two days after Pinto had published a three-page story about the Maiorana family's media holdings.
In his office at O Liberal's gated compound, Maiorana, 39, sounded contrite, calling his actions "stupid" and "wrong." Sitting a few feet from where he keeps a shrine to his father's memory, Maiorana acknowledged Pinto's story was factually correct.
But he said Pinto betrayed the trust of his father, Romulo Maiorana, by revealing things told in confidence. (Pinto quit O Liberal a few months after the elder Maiorana's death in a dispute over a political expose written by Pinto that the paper refused to publish.)
"I was hurt not because of myself but because he talked about very intimate subjects," said Maiorana, whose widowed mother, older brother and sister also oversee the family business. Besides two newspapers, the Maioranas also control a regional television station, radio broadcasters, a cable company and an Internet portal.
'He saw me as a kind of son'
TALKING with Maiorana and Pinto makes clear the quasi-familial rivalry at the heart of their dispute. "His dream was always to have a journalist son," says Pinto of the elder Maiorana. "He never had a journalist son because his own sons were not good enough as journalists. So he saw me as a kind of son."
