In 1949, the family moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where his father, Victor Civita, had founded the Editora Abril, first publishing comic books under license from the Walt Disney Company.

[4][5] Civita did his college studies in the United States, beginning with nuclear physics at Rice University, Texas, but gave up the subject when he realized that it was not his calling.

[5] Civita returned to Brazil in the mid-1960s, to assume various positions at Editora Abril and organize a radical change in Brazilian journalism.

In addition, with his participation, Abril launched several major magazine titles for specific markets, such as Quatro Rodas (automotive), Claudia and Manequim (for women), Exame (business), Realidade, and Superinteressante (Science & Culture).

Like other publishers, Civita struggled to maintain press freedom under the long years of the repressive military government that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

[5] Mino Carta, co-founder and former managing editor of Veja (between 1968 and 1976), said that the military government's censorship imposed on the magazine was "very harsh."

[5] Five years later, an investigation made by the Brazilian Federal Police that used legally authorized wiretaps found that Policarpo Jr., the bureau chief of Veja in Brasília, who talked very often with the mafiosi Carlinhos Cachoeira, had ordered illegal wiretapping of politicians linked to the government party to gain material for his reporters.

[12][13] Following this revelation, a May 2012 article in Mino Carta's CartaCapital compared Civita to the controversial British publisher, Rupert Murdoch, because of his effective control of so much of the Brazilian media and the use of methods that were less than ethical.

[14][15] It found that Cachoeira had unorthodox connections with politicians who were (as the ex-senator Demóstenes Torres) and are (as the Rio's councilman Stepan Nercessian) opposed to the Workers Party.

[16] In response, the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo, (owned by the Marinho family's media conglomerate, the largest in Brazil) editorialized: "Roberto Civita is not Rupert Murdoch."

The editorial said that "blogs and pro-government media outlets that act as the auxiliary line of radical sectors of the PT" had unleashed "an organized campaign against the Veja magazine.