Media history: the Portuguese law of the press before and after the carnation revolution - reflections from authoritarianism and revolution

From 1933 until 1974, Portugal lived under the authoritarian regime Estado Novo. Known for its strict regulations of the media with censorship and propaganda as tools of the regime, it determined what was newsworthy and built an alternative reality of the country (Ribeiro, 2014, 2017). On the 25th of April 1974, a military coup overthrew the regime and with it the end of the prevailing law of the press and censorship. The aim of this research is to analyse and understand how the law of the press evolved and was portrayed in the final years of the regime against the first months of democracy. For that, the research takes on the law of the press from 1972 and compares it against the law of 1974/75, and the coverage received in the newspaper O Século. The research is conducted through document and journalistic analysis and intends to understand the impact such laws had in the path of Portuguese journalism. In contemporary Portuguese journalism, censorship is still a sensible subject and an eco of 48 years of authoritarianism. How the law of the press contribute to the change in the journalistic field is what this research aims to understand.