Interview: The creation of the Fiocruz News Agency

It was in 2004 that the Social Communication Coordination (CCS/Fiocruz) decided to turn its website into the Fiocruz News Agency, as a natural evolution of the growth and visibility of its old web page, launched in 1998. The department had a team of experienced journalists, who were used to writing about health and science, and had a large volume of news from Fiocruz to disseminate. Until then, news agencies were linked to major newspapers (Globo, Folha, Estadão) or foreign communications companies (AFP, Reuters, Ansa, etc.), but news agencies were rare in public institutions and practically non-existent in the fields of health and science. As a result, the CCS, led by its then coordinator Christina Tavares and then sub-coordinator Wagner de Oliveira, gathered its journalists, hired a designer especially for the task and created AFN in 2004.

CCS evaluated news agency websites to study how they worked, researched the best editing tools and listed what AFN needed to present. Models quickly emerged and, after meetings, suggestions and adjustments, the new website was launched. It is worth mentioning that, from the beginning, in addition to the texts written by CCS journalists, the newspaper made use of the materials produced by professionals from the communications departments of Fiocruz units, which have always contributed to supplying AFN with news.

In the following interview, journalist Wagner de Oliveira, who was the then sub-coordinator of the CCS/Fiocruz and who led the project that resulted in the creation of AFN, recalls the beginning and the first few years of the media outlet.

Wagner Oliveira led the project that resulted in the creation of AFN (photo: Disclusure)

What was the CCS website like before AFN?

Wagner de Oliveira: That first website appeared at a time when the Internet was already occupying a significant space in terms of capillarity and breadth. CCS produced a great deal of content and the website was an area to organize and order everything that was done in terms of text by the sector. There was a newspaper, which later became a magazine. However, the team resented not having a space that would serve as a repository for the news they produced. CCS had a good team of editors and reporters with experience in health and science in mainstream media of major newspapers. We often received compliments on how well-written and well-founded our texts were. The press also used our press releases to write stories, sometimes just changing one thing or another, or one paragraph or another, and using our content. And it was also a way of accounting for the work done at Fiocruz, of saving the memories. So there was nothing more natural than creating a website for the CCS, whose first article appeared in 1998, four years after the first version of Fiocruz's Website. The latter, in fact, changed a lot until it stabilized in a consolidated version in the early 2000s.

Before the AFN, but when it already had its own website, the CCS occupied and edited a space on Fiocruz's Website. What was the area like?

Wagner de Oliveira: The institutional website presented Fiocruz to society. There was a timeline, historical facts and current affairs, in this case edited by CCS. So there was a space on Fiocruz's Website, about a quarter of the homepage, which was edited and updated directly by CCS.

The first CCS site, before the creation of Fiocruz News Agency (photo: Reproduction)

Why was AFN created?

Wagner de Oliveira: There are two components. The field of communication was well developed and mature at the Foundation and was understood as a social determinant of health. Communication was already considered an end-use area and so it appeared in the documents of the Internal Congress, and there was already a Vice Presidency that included the sector. Years before, we had undergone a first phase, in which communication was understood only as marketing. And with the team that CCS had, we were able to produce qualified content to disseminate throughout the country via a news agency. This was where reports, articles, interviews, etc. came in, making a decisive contribution to the national debate on science, public health and the SUS. We knew what the laboratories, including those outside Rio, were producing, we proofread articles written by researchers, and we conducted good interviews on current issues such as the dengue epidemic and avian flu. In short, we had something to say and CCS understood its role in this scenario in which the field of communication has taken on a structuring role for the SUS [the Brazilian Unified Health System] and science.

So we put together the qualified content by CCS, produced by a good team of journalists, some of whom had worked for major daily newspapers and others who came from the Ciência Hoje magazine and were used to writing about Fiocruz issues, as well as professionals with experience in writing and proofreading. At a certain point, with the Internet consolidated as an important tool, that great production by our team and Fiocruz having something to communicate, we came up with the idea of creating a news agency. And there was a background: Fiocruz had a lot of references as a body that produces qualified content and reflection on science and health. So the intention was also to gather, in one space, the content that journalists could access and develop stories, use interviews, articles, especially radio stations and newspapers in the countryside. In short, we had a lot to say, with quality content and expertise accumulated at CCS to support the creation of an agency with the seal of Fiocruz, which is not at all trivial, as it requires an accumulation of experience and security in what is done.

The second part of the answer is that we called in journalists and designers to think about what the navigation guide would look like and we created other sections, such as the Bookshelf, to publicize and review the books of Editora Fiocruz. Many units still didn't have advisory services, so we published articles on articles published in scientific journals, such as Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz [Oswaldo Cruz Institute's Memories], Cadernos de Saúde Pública [Public Health Notebooks], História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos, [History, Science, Health - Manguinhos], etc. And so AFN grew and continued adding content.

I remember when there was the avian flu crisis, when we made a hotsite that became a reference and was what we suggested to the press when journalists wanted to consult qualified content. There was already fake news... We also sought out community radio networks to publicize our materials. We told them they could use it, we just asked them to give us credit. All this emerged from brainstorms that took place at the famous CCS meeting table. We invented Perfis de Manguinhos [Manguinhos Profiles], dedicated to biographies of renowned researchers. It was content to give AFN strength and add increasingly more content. At Fiocruz, there was Canal Saúde [Health Channel], VideoSaúde [HealthVideo], Fiocruz's Website, the Radis magazine... and CCS had AFN as its flagship. Over time, researchers began approaching us to tell us about their research, their projects, etc. The AFN was firmly planted in their minds.

Was the concept inspired by another agency?

Wagner de Oliveira: Yes, kind of. We were pioneers in running a news agency for a public research institution. There were foreign news agencies and national ones, linked to big Brazilian newspapers such as O Globo, Folha and Estadão. That was the basic concept. The question was how to adapt this concept of distributing journalistic material to an institution like Fiocruz, without it becoming a blank slate that only served to praise Foundation. The idea was to get away from that. So much so that we have produced polarizing debates, such as the issue of schistosomiasis: Is it better to spend millions to develop a vaccine or is it better to invest in sanitation in rural areas and control the snail that transmits it? Because sanitizing costs less and is an easier and more civilized way to go than vaccinating. The aim, therefore, was to open up to society, presenting Fiocruz's work in setting up a news agency.

What content do you highlight from these two decades?

Wagner de Oliveira: The AFN Specials, which continue to be produced, bringing together a diverse range of content, were a great idea. In them, we dissect topics such as Ebola, the dengue epidemic, H1N1, among many others. It is worth mentioning the coverage of major events, such as national health conferences. In the case of the 12th National Health Conference, which took place before the AFN came into existence, I and other colleagues followed and covered it on site in Brasília, and this material became a special for the then pre-AFN CCS website. At the following conferences, we sent journalists who sent their content to Rio. AFN signifies a maturing of the field of communication at Fiocruz, as well as the maturing of the CCS itself as an agent that delivers qualified content to the press and society.

How did Perfis de Manguinhos [Manguinhos' Profiles], Glossário de Doenças [Glossary of Diseases] and Fio da História [History Thread], sections of the AFN with differentiated content, come into existence?

Wagner de Oliveira: In the case of Perfis de Manguinhos, we lived with great scientists, national and international references, exponents in their fields, who trained legions of researchers and lived through remarkable episodes in the institution, such as the Manguinhos' Massacre [ten scientists from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute were forced to retire under the Military Dictatorship]. There was Wladimir Lobato Paraense, a world reference in malacology, Victor Valla, another reference, in this case in popular education, Hermann Schatzmayr, a leading researcher in dengue fever, the sanitarian Sergio Arouca, the parasitologist Luiz Rey, author of many famous books, including a well-known dictionary that was widely consulted by the entire CCS when writing texts. There used to be that stereotype, in the social imagination, that 'scientists don't make good biographers', since they live a straight life, stay only in the laboratory and talk about things that nobody understands. But that's not true. They had rich life stories. And, you know, we intended to make these biographies, the Profiles, along the lines of so-called literary journalism, to tell these stories. Literary journalism was and still is a passion of ours, a passion we cultivate at CCS, as you well know.

The Glossary has a background. Fiocruz became better known as soon as it had its first professional communication team, in the early 1980s. First came Christina Tavares, who set up the sector at Fiocruz and led it for many years, then came Ana Palma, Umberto Trigueiros and others. A milestone at that time was when Fiocruz scientists isolated HIV, a feat of immense importance. Then, after many years of dictatorship in the country, there was a press conference in which they put Fiocruz at the service of qualified debate. In the 1990s, CCS grew and other journalists joined us, expanding our content. From then on, if we look in the archives, the number of reports about Fiocruz in the press grew a lot. I believe that part of the favorable image of Fiocruz, which began to be consolidated during that period, is due to the work of CCS and other communication areas at Fiocruz.

It is worth noting that the Foundation was one of the first public institutions to have a professional communication department in the New Republic. In the 1990s, the press began broadcasting a lot of news about Fiocruz. Several congresses and scientific events were held and many of the reporters covering them, especially radio reporters, but not only them, were unprepared and unaware of health and science issues. To fill this gap, we decided to better prepare the reporters who were covering the story and began to create glossaries, as well as offering training courses. In doing so, we were responding to a recurring complaint from the researchers, who at the time were very critical of the lack of knowledge of the journalists who interviewed them and the inaccuracies in the press reports. The Glossary qualified the coverage and showed the researchers that we were working to train the reporters. The idea, of course, was taken up by AFN.

About Fio da História: Fiocruz's history is very interesting and our patron, Oswaldo Cruz, at the beginning of the last century, was already very popular with the media. He understood early on that he needed to communicate with society and hired the photographer J. Pinto to document the entire construction of the Fiocruz Castle and the scientific expeditions to Brazil's countryside. He produced films for an international exhibition. There is a documentary by VideoSaúde, The Brazilian Cinematographer in Dresden, which features images from films depicting the campaign against yellow fever undertaken in Rio de Janeiro by Oswaldo Cruz. The work contains scenes from films produced by the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, the embryo of today's Fiocruz, and presented by Oswaldo Cruz in Dresden, Germany, in 1911. They were the first scientific films in Brazil. In other words, there is a lot of great history at Fiocruz to be turned into journalistic content.

I remember when Fio da História recalled Albert Einstein's visit to Brazil and Fiocruz in 1925. When we take the Castle's centenary elevator, we remember that Einstein, Theodore Roosevelt, Fidel Castro, François Mitterrand and so many other personalities passed through it. In addition, of course, to the hundreds of anonymous people who visit Fiocruz and are just as important. Returning to Fio da História about Einstein, at the opening of the text we played a game with things he asked for during his visit, recalling that Einstein wanted to go up to the fifth floor to see the landscape, at a time when the waters of the Guanabara Bay came very near and the mountains seen from the top of the Castle displayed more lush and untouched vegetation. Einstein said he was delighted and, although he complained about the heat, he praised the greenery and the Bay. He wanted iced coffee and posed for a photo to the left of Carlos Chagas, which led us, in the text, to play a game comparing that moment with the Our Father prayer and Einstein to a god, which in fact he was at the time, a god of science. This is what Fio da História is all about: Recovering the history of Fiocruz and playing with literary journalism, generating pleasure in the reader and escaping from the institutional text.

Has the AFN contributed to the training of journalists?

Wagner de Oliveira: In many cases, yes. We often recommend reporters consult the Glossário de Doenças or other AFN articles before conferences, events or interviews. It was a concern of ours, to qualify press professionals. This was also to make it easier to approach some of the researchers, who were still somewhat prejudiced against journalists and even resistant to giving interviews.

Has scientists' resistance to journalists decreased with the qualification of the work done by CCS?

Wagner de Oliveira: Yes, quite a lot. As they read and saw that the content had quality. The skill of the journalists at CCS and later the communication departments at Fiocruz units, such as the IOC and others, in handling information and producing texts, contributed decisively to this change in perception on the part of researchers. CCS planted it and the units' advisors followed suit. So we started to be approached by researchers who wanted to publicize an initiative, a study, a book, or a scientific event. If, at first, we went after the researchers, later they started coming to us to promote their projects. As a result, even other institutions began to contact CCS to publish their news, although AFN has only published content relating to Fiocruz since its inception.

How important is it for a public institution like Fiocruz to have a news agency?

Wagner de Oliveira: There are several reasons. The first is to be permanently accountable to society. Fiocruz is a strategic institution of the Brazilian state and its budget comes from the taxes paid by taxpayers. If you want to know how Fiocruz uses its budget, just go to AFN and you'll see what a dynamic, productive institution it is, constantly responding to the demands of public health. The other is to give importance to communication. We were pioneers in highlighting the social role of scientists and SUS workers in the political game, via communication. And there is also a pact with the process of civilization. AFN represents the process of civilization by offering 'fine cookies', in terms of qualified information, to the population, something that the country and the world need more and more.

How do you rate health and science journalism in Brazil?

Wagner de Oliveira: Today, there are many more trained professionals in the field than 20 years ago. However, if many colleges train professionals who have immense difficulties with the basics of journalism, which are knowledge of and good command of the Portuguese language, what can they say about covering health and science? Conferences and events have played a major role in training professionals. There are a lot of people producing qualified content on science and health, and CCS and AFN play a part in this, as in the case of the courses we offer, the texts we publish, etc. I often say that The New York Times has a science department with 20 professionals, who produce up to five pages in an issue, meaning that they know how important this is to a country's project. And so they encourage training, both with journalists who go on to specialize in biomedical areas and health professionals who study journalism and become reporters. The BBC shows how a public policy to train journalists pays off. And not just in science and health, but in other areas such as history, politics and economics. It's a priority issue for governments. At some point, AFN may have space for checking scientific information, with the seal of Fiocruz. This will undoubtedly help to further qualify the debate and train professionals.

How would you see AFN in the coming years?

Wagner de Oliveira: There's a lot to explore. Today, people read little and consume a lot of video. Investing in video is important, as is establishing partnerships with community and university radio stations. EBC is being restructured and should become a state broadcaster, not a government broadcaster, following the model of the BBC and French public TV. Thus, AFN will be able to reach an even wider audience, with more capillarity. And the name Fiocruz opens doors. It's important to be aware of technologies such as podcasts, oral archives, radio spots, which can remain as a memory in AFN and can be downloaded. Why not an AFN Radio? And think beyond the Southeast and the capitals. Brazil is very big and Fiocruz is a national institution. And the demand for content is huge from independent broadcasters. It's a niche that can be filled. We have quality and we can expand our reach.

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