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Angola MASS MEDIA
The government nationalized all print and broadcast
media in
1976, and as of late 1988 the government and party still
controlled
almost all the news media. Angola's official news agency,
Angop,
distributed about 8,000 issues of the government
newsletter, Diário
de República, and 40,000 copies of Jornal de
Angola
daily in Luanda and other urban areas under FAPLA control.
Both
publications were in Portuguese. International press
operations in
Luanda included Agence France-Presse, Cuba's Prensa
Latina, Xinhua
(New China) News Agency, and several Soviet and East
European
agency offices.
Under the scrutiny of the MPLA-PT, the media were
limited to
disseminating official policy without critical comment or
opposing
viewpoints. The Angolan Journalists' Union, which
proclaimed the
right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the
Constitution,
nonetheless worked closely with the MPLA-PT and pressured
writers
to adhere to government guidelines. Views differing
slightly from
official perceptions were published in the UNTA monthly
newsletter,
O Voz do Trabalhador, despite active censorship.
Rádio Nacional de Angola was the largest of eighteen
mediumwave and short-wave stations operating throughout the
country.
Radio broadcasts were in Portuguese and vernacular
languages, and
there were an estimated 435,000 receivers in 1988. In the
late
1980s, people in central and southern Angola also received
opposition radio broadcasts from the Voice of Resistance
of the
Black Cockerel, operated by UNITA in Portuguese, English,
and local
vernaculars. Limited television service in Portuguese
became
available in Luanda and surrounding areas in 1976, but by
1988
there were only about 40,500 television sets in the
country.
Angop maintained a cooperative relationship with the
Soviet
news agency, TASS, and Angola was active in
international
efforts to improve coordination among nonaligned nations
in the
field of communications. Information ministers and news
agency
representatives from several Third World nations were
scheduled to
hold their fifth conference in Luanda in June 1989--their
first
meeting since 1985, when they met in Havana. The Angop
delegation
was to serve as host of the 1989 conference, and Angolan
information officials in the government and party were to
chair the
organization from 1989 to 1992.
Angola was also a leader among Portuguese-speaking
nations of
Africa. Students from these nations attended the
Interstate
Journalism School in Luanda, which opened May 23, 1987,
with
support from the Yugoslav news agency, Tanyug. In
September 1987,
journalists from these five Lusophone nations held their
third
conference in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. A major goal of this
group was
to coordinate cultural development based on their common
language,
but an important secondary goal was to demonstrate support
for
Angola in its confrontation with South Africa. By 1990
they hoped
to celebrate the Pan-African News Agency's opening of a
Portuguese
desk in Luanda.
Data as of February 1989
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