Jornalismo de guerra em Angola durante o conflito ultramarino português

Resumo

En.

This article examines the journalistic coverage of the Portuguese Colonial War by Notícia, a weekly publication based in Luanda from 1959 to 1975. Based on an analysis of articles published between 1961 and 1974 and eight interviews with professionals who worked in Angolan media during that period, it attempts to understand how journalistic coverage of the conflict was done; what space the publication accorded war news; what professional practices were employed by reporters; what risks they faced in the field and what strategies they employed to circumvent censorship. Exclu- sively analysing publication copy to study the events and facts of the past is inadequate. In light of that, the interviews were vital to understand and ascertain truth from fiction; news from propaganda and what was told and what was not. This article also addresses the context of censorship; the risks ran by Portuguese war correspondents in the field and the history of Notícia, which, at the time, was an audacious and avant-garde publication inter- ested in the Colonial War—the single most important armed conflict in Portugal’s history. This paper finds that Notícia depicted the war from the perspective of both the Portuguese armed forces and the Angolan liberation forces by providing original content—in contrast to the majority of censored Portuguese media that did not dare defy the official account.