The possibility of visiting Brasil de Fato’s website and having access to text reports, audio, video, with infographics and other resources was not necessarily among the intentions of the project founders when it was launched, in 2003, during the World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre (state of Rio Grande do Sul).
Let alone that, through social networks, the user could find out basically all the information published on the site. Multilingualism was not in the plans at first, due to the fact that part of these communication platforms did not exist at the time, or were still in their infancy. In 2003, thinking about an online news portal was already a great advance. What about a page on TikTok, a Chinese network that arrived in Brazil only in 2018, with 133,000 followers and videos with millions of views?
Nina Fideles, the project's executive director, explains that the newspaper's format choices were made in line with popular struggles and the technical possibilities of the moment.
"The printed newspaper was an available format and what was considered more efficient at the time", explains the journalist when referring to the creation of the project, in 2003. "Brasil de Fato has always responded to a demand for a popular project, for understanding, and then a very fine alignment between the project, left-wing discussions and communication. I think today we reach this 20th anniversary with a very fine understanding of what the instrument is, of political alignment and about occupying all available media to dispute this narrative."
20 years after its launch, Brasil de Fato remains attentive to new technologies / Brasil de Fato
Steps in the digital environment
The relationship between the evolution of the project and the needs of the popular field can be seen in the story of Brasil de Fato’s website, told by Jorge Pereira Filho, a member of the first team of journalists responsible for the newspaper.
He explains that the site was born practically at the same time as the printed version of the newspaper, back in 2003, but with a totally different logic from the current one. The original idea was to be just a repository of materials produced for the printed version, without any exclusive content or that explored the possibilities of the internet in terms of language.
"However, as the project matured, with the BdF network of collaborators growth and also in tune with the changes in the communication ecosystems, we began to realize that the printed newspaper was not able to cover all the wealth of contributions and all the political capital that we had been accumulating around the newspaper", says Jorge.
This was revealed in the suggestions - and even demands - that came from the vehicle's network of collaborators throughout Brazil, a series of militants, communicators or not, spread throughout the country proposing agendas linked to their realities.
"Brasil de Fato had and has a very strong political capital among social organizations and the Brazilian left-wing, and because of that we were much sought after with suggestions for subjects and texts. And there was, in the middle of the project, the articulation of the network of national collaborators of the printed vehicle, a very great harmony with the agenda and with the dynamics of the popular movements and the social organizations that were part of this field in which we were inserted", remembers Jorge.
The editorial team saw that there was room to expand the project's digital presence, with its own articles and a more constant production. From the provocation of these professionals, Agência Brasil de Fato was born, the first action entirely focused on the digital environment.
For this, it was necessary to reformulate the newspaper's website, making it easier to publish content. This was done free of charge, through contacts between the newspaper's team and militants from the free software area, many of them developers.
The first coverage carried out as an agency took place at the World Social Forum in 2005, in the context of an articulation between various organizations such as Via Campesina and labor unions. "It was a very plural event coverage, giving the agency great visibility. From there, we began a work that developed over the years and bore fruits", says Jorge.
"I remember that we did real-time coverage of elections in Bolivia, in Venezuela, of political processes in Argentina, that the big communication vehicles did not have any collaborators there. And BdF sometimes had professionals exclusively sent by us."
Growth and transformation
Today, 18 years after that coverage, Brasil de Fato’s website is consolidated as one of the main spaces of the left-wing media in Brazil. BdF closed 2022 with more than 68 million hits on the main page. In October alone, the election period, there were almost 14 million, showing the vehicle's strength at a key moment for the country's future.
Among vehicles focused on specific coverage, specialized in monitoring topics related to power such as politics, law, economics, BdF ranked fifth in September 2022.
In addition to the internet portal, the project works with programs aired on free-to-air TV and YouTube, radio content distributed in hundreds of stations in the country, specific work on social networks with differentiated production and special printed tabloids.
On social media, BdF is on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter. Adding up all platforms, the vehicle has more than 1.7 million followers.
Sônia Guajajara in an interview at the Brasil de Fato studio / Brasil de Fato
In traditional TV, Brasil de Fato's main partnership is TVT, which broadcasts, on an open channel, to the entire metropolitan region of São Paulo. In addition, in 2022, BdF's audiovisual content was broadcast on 13 community and educational TVs in Brazil, covering a variety of formats and approaches, covering not only Brazil, but all of Latin America and Africa.
On the radio, the project remains firm as an agency for production and dissemination of reports. There are almost 300 radio stations registered to receive some of BdF's daily or weekly productions. The website also registered almost 100,000 downloads of audio reports, available free of charge on the portal. In number of listeners, there were 4.5 million people.
For José Arbex, the newspaper's first editor and professor of communication at PUC-SP, it is impossible to compare the work developed in the original project with what is done today from a technical and operational point of view. "You can compare from the point of view of internal coherence, ideological coherence, project proposal etc. And I think that the vehicle today is much more mature, it is much more in tune with the Brazilian reality than at that time", he evaluates .
Those who follow Brasil de Fato can always expect new ideas, formats, programs in the most diverse languages, always with the commitment of the highest journalistic rigor. And the same political and ideological coherence, anchored in popular movements.
Edited by: Flávia Chacon e Rodrigo Durão Coelho
