Brazil
Brazil’s federal state media are concentrated in a single entity. State Media Monitor maps one outlet in Brazil: the Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), the federal public-media company, classified State-Controlled (SC). EBC is not a single channel but a conglomerate: it runs the television channel TV Brasil (and its international signal) and the government channel Canal Gov; the Rádio Nacional and Rádio MEC radio networks; the news agency Agência Brasil and Radioagência Nacional; supports the production and distribution of the mandatory official radio programme A Voz do Brasil; and coordinates the Rede Nacional de Comunicação Pública (RNCP), a growing network of affiliated public stations. A single mapped outlet therefore corresponds to a large, multi-platform national media operation reaching audiences across television, radio and digital.
This concentration reflects Brazil’s media structure. Unlike its private sector, one of the largest and most concentrated in the Americas, dominated by a handful of family conglomerates, the federal executive’s own media are consolidated within one public company. That makes EBC’s governance and independence the central question for state media in Brazil.
Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC) is a federal public company created in 2007, operating under the Secretaria de Comunicação Social (SECOM) of the Presidency of the Republic. It is classified State-Controlled because it sits within the Presidency’s communications structure, its Board of Administration and Executive Board are appointed and removed by the President, it depends primarily on public funding, and, although its legal framework states a principle of editorial autonomy, its governance provides no arm’s-length firewall from the executive. Its output has, across successive governments, foregrounded the activities of the incumbent administration. In 2023, EBC formalised the separation between public-service broadcasting and direct government communication by launching Canal Gov as a dedicated government-communication channel, while TV Brasil was presented as reassuming its public-service role.
The classification does not turn on which party holds power. EBC served the Bolsonaro government (a period marked by reported censorship and complaints of “governmentisation”) and now serves the Lula government, which reversed the previous administration’s move to privatise the company (removing EBC from the federal privatisation programme in 2023) and has appointed successive company presidents, most recently the screenwriter and former EBC content director Antonia Pellegrino in April 2026, the fourth EBC president under the current government. These are executive decisions that reflect the company’s subordination to the Presidency rather than reducing it. EBC’s State-Controlled status is unchanged for 2026.
Brazil’s broader press-freedom environment has improved markedly. Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 52nd of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 66.37, placing it in the “problematic” band and up eleven places from 63rd in 2025, one of the few clear recoveries in the Americas, and the first time Brazil has ranked above the United States in the index’s history. RSF attributes the recovery to the normalisation of relations between the media and state institutions after the Bolsonaro period. At the same time, it identifies persistent structural problems: heavily concentrated private media ownership, structural violence against journalists, disinformation, and, directly relevant to EBC, that state-owned media face relative budgetary fragility and remain subject to attempts at editorial interference by the government. Brazil has no comprehensive AI law fully in force as of mid-2026, though the AI bill PL 2338/2023 was approved by the Senate in December 2024 and remained under consideration in the Chamber of Deputies.
Beyond EBC, Brazil’s other branches of government operate their own broadcasters, notably the legislative channels of Congress (TV Senado, Rádio Senado, TV Câmara, Rádio Câmara) and the judicial channels administered by the Supreme Court (TV Justiça, Rádio Justiça). These are state-owned and publicly funded, but they are controlled by the Legislature and the Judiciary rather than by the executive, and are not part of the State Media Monitor roster for Brazil in this cycle. The analysis above concerns EBC, the federal executive’s public-media company, which is the entity SMM maps.