The Catholic, the capitalist and the post-communist: three leaders rewritten in the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias

Every year, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) serves as a global forum for the reflection about peace and human progress. The importance of this event is usually reflected on the member States’ media, in which not only the nation’s representative is considered newsworthy, but also major world leaders and/or others related with issues on the international agenda. In 1995 and in 2015, three heads of different ideologies who delivered a speech at the UNGA were considered newsworthy by the prestigious Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias: the Pope, as supreme leader of Catholicism; the President of the United States, as the main representative of capitalism; and the President of the Russian Federation, as the main head of post-communism since the fall of the Iron Curtain. We would argue that the editorial choices taken on the rewriting of each of these UNGA speeches reflected more than the international relevancy of the leaders and their messages; rather, that they were influenced by historical factors, ultimately contributing for the perpetuation of cultural models among the general public.