Definitions and Trends of Film Journalism in Portugal

Film Journalism is a journalistic specialization that is theoretically and conceptually framed in the field of Cultural Journalism. As cinema is one of the cultural and artistic manifestations with a greater presence in the Portuguese media, it is important to look and reflect on the journalistic coverage of which film activity is targeted. In this article, we propose to answer the questions"how can we define today's 'film journalism'?" and "which trends of this journalistic specialization we find in the main Portuguese media?". Thus, and based on the research "Film Journalism in Portugal: an analysis of the press, radio, television and online media in 2019", developed between 2018 and 2022 at Iscte, we tried to carry out a reflection on the main distinctive features of the specific journalistic practice of this specialization. We conclude that Portuguese Film Journalism is similar to the international trends of Cultural Journalism when it is largely based on the dissemination and celebration of premieres, festivals and artists, but also that it is quite fragile, abandoning the ability to reflect and question with the absence of sources of information and a fragile criticism and dominated by a light and simplistic discourse, culminating in hybrid formats such as review andbelittling the interpretation and film analysis that are constituents of the distinct conceptualization of Film Journalism.