Agencia Lusa is the flagship news agency in Portugal. It has a newsroom with some 200 journalists and a network of about 80 freelancers.
Media assets
News agency: Lusa
State Media Matrix Typology: Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM)
Ownership and governance
Lusa is 50.1% owned by the state with the rest of its stake controlled by private media companies including Impresa and Global Media Group. Lusa has a contract with the Portuguese state to provide news of public interest.
The main governing body at Lusa is a Board of Directors that can have three, five, seven or nine members who are appointed by the general shareholders meeting.
Source of funding & budget
In 2021, Lusa operated with a budget of €16.8m. The following year, it had a total income of €17.2m. Most of the agency’s income, nearly three quarters, comes from the state budget, according to an annual report of the agency.
Editorial independence
There are no provisions imposed by the government on the editorial policy of Lusa. No evidence of government control at Lusa has been identified. An ad hoc content analysis carried out for this project in the latest stage of the research found that the news content on Lusa is balanced, with no preferential coverage of state bodies being identified.
Lusa has an ethical code that guarantees the agency’s editorial independence, requiring the outlet’s journalists to abide by a set of editorial rules.
No independent assessment or oversight mechanism to validate the editorial independence of Lusa has been identified during the latest round of research.
September 2023