Editor-At-LargeFolha de S.Paulo
Patrícia Campos Mello is an editor-at-large at Folha de S. Paulo, the leading newspaper in Brazil. For over 25 years, she has been covering international relations, technology and human rights, and has reported from over 50 countries. She has been awarded the Columbia University Maria Moors Cabot award, the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists; the Vladimir Herzog Special Award for Democracy and Justice, the International Committee of the Red Cross Prize for humanitarian journalism, the King of Spain Journalism Prize.
Since 2014, she has been covering disinformation and influence operations. The stories led the Judiciary branch in Brazil to change electoral regulations. She is the author of the best-selling book ""A máquina do ódio"" (Companhia das Letras), about disinformation campaigns by populist leaders in Brazil, India and the US.
She was the Washington correspondent for the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper between 2006 and 2010. She covered the 2008, 2012 and 2016 elections; the war in Afghanistan in 2009, the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001. Patrícia has a degree in Journalism from the University of São Paulo and a master’s from New York University. She was an associate researcher at Columbia University in 2021/2022, working on a project about internet regulation and electoral disinformation. In the last few years, she spent time in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Lebanon and Kenya reporting on conflict and refugees, and she was responsible for the project Mundo de Muros (World of Walls) that depicts the migration crisis in four continents. She was the only Brazilian reporter to cover the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, in 2014 and 2015. She covered the COVID pandemic in Brazil, reporting from public hospitals and shelters for homeless population.
She is the author of "" Lua de Mel em Kobane"", a book about Syrian refugees who resisted the Islamic State siege in Kobane.