Journalistic podcasts on Brazilian public radio: quality offer, but with limited circulation

Abstract

This article maps the journalistic podcast offer produced by Radioagência Nacional, which is affiliated at the Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC). The aim is to identify the conditions under which these podcasts are produced and circulate. Unlike other countries, where public media services have played a decisive role in the consolidation of podcasting over the past two decades, in Brazil the EBC only began investing in on-demand audio in 2023. A survey of the Radioagência Nacional’s catalog identified only 12 podcasts launched between February 2023 and June 2025. Although the content is of high quality and addresses topics of public interest such as human rights, democracy, media history and sustainability, it suffers from a lack of investment and remains largely invisible on the radio news agency platform. Moreover, it is absent from the EBC Radios audio application. Departing from semi-structured interviews with two employees, the article concludes that podcasting at EBC is the result of coordinated efforts by journalists employed by the public sector rather than being part of a broader strategy to consolidate the presence of audio content produced by the company on digital platforms, which expand media consumption across different formats and temporalities.