The newspaper is known in Maranhão for its conflicted relationship with the former Brazilian president Jose Sarney, in which the newspaper moved from being his supporter in 1965[3] to being such a fierce opposition to Sarney[4] that its founder was called a blackmailer by the former president himself.[3]
Sarney was also a plaintiff against Jornal Pequeno at the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice in a case of defamation, a charge that was upheld by the court in 2017, which ordered Jornal Pequeno to pay Sarney the sum of forty thousand Brazilian Reais.[5]
Despite the acrimonious history between the two, in 2022 Sarney published a friendly article on the online edition of Jornal Pequeno discussing about his personal preference for printed newspapers instead of online media vehicles as sources of journalistic information[6]