Jornalismo de agência : a prática de agências nacionais nos países lusófonos – Brasil, Portugal, Moçambique e Angola

Abstract

The research that follows analyses the set of four national news agencies linked to the states in which they are inserted and that originally operate in Portuguese language. Agência Brasil (ABr), Agência de Notícias de Portugal (Lusa), Agência de Informação Moçambicana (AIM) e Agência Angola Press (ANGOP) are the cases observed within this study that aims to understand the journalism practiced by each of the services. The description of the cases was made through participant observation in the newsrooms and agencies' websites, interviews with professionals and bibliographical and documentary research. From the data gathered, relationships between the different realities found are drawn, in order to understand the practices as a whole. The agencies can be seen in two pairs: the Brazilian and the Portuguese, which share a history of creation and development of agency journalism in the countries where they are established; and the two African ones, with foundation just after the independence of Angola and Mozambique within a perspective of gain of autonomy. Their starting points, however, do not unite the agencies throughout their existence. Despite the dissonance, in all four cases, they assume an official agenda of the Federal Executives as part of their work. The concepts and history of agency journalism as well as public service understandings and the notion of lusophony guide the discussions proposed in the study in an attempt to understand the journalistic services of these agencies cited and how their practices are organized.