Negativity, conflict and resistance: The Portuguese revolutionary process (1974–75) and its international mediations – Spanish newspapers and the Inter Press Service

Abstract

By considering the Portuguese revolutionary process of 1974–75 as a mediatic event, this article addresses aspects of the internal logic of information flow in the western context, heavily influenced and mediated by the frame of the Cold War. Initiated by a military coup, intended to put an end to 48 years of an authoritarian regime and thirteen years of colonial wars, the revolutionary process lasted about nineteen months and brought about such a change in the country’s social, political and economic structures that the constitution approved in 1976, included the goal of ensuring a transition to socialism. Meanwhile the hegemonic power of the main news agencies was the object of an international debate, with the UNESCO-sponsored MacBride Report (1980) offering proposals for the rebalancing of information. Focusing on this process as a mediatic event highlights the power of news agencies, influential even in contexts of informative restriction (as in the Spanish case) and responsible, to a large extent, for the dominant negativity of the event’s portrayal. This was the origin of increasing tensions between revolutionary political subjects and foreign correspondents, and also of the activation of forms of resistance, such as the agency Inter Press Service (IPS), whose aim to counter the dominant logic inscribes it in the North–South dialogue.