Launch of Brasil Post, the HuffPost in Brazil: Coherences and contradictions

Abstract

In its institutional speech, the American pure player HuffPost, previously The Huffington Post, qualifies it self in the media market as a vehicle that practices “independent” digital journalism and with great participation of the reader. The Brazilian version of the journalistic website and blog aggregator began to be published in January 2014, as the tenth international edition of the global brand. The launch was the result of a business partnership between The Huffington Post Media Group and Editora Abril, and raised questions about the possible contradictions between the practice of an independent journalism (plural and polyphonic), devised by the mark, and his association with Abril Group, whose best-known publication is the magazine Veja, which sustains a remarkably conservative and arbitrary positioning in their political and social views. In this article, we talk about this alliance and we analyze some media content resulting from the launch of the brand in Brazil. We seek to understand the concept of journalistic independence, a definition that is part of the so-called principles of journalism, as well as its role in the construction of the image of the HuffPost in Brazil.

Keywords: digital journalism, HuffPost Brasil (Brasil Post), journalistic independence.