Manuela Moura Guedes

In the late 70s, a young Law student applies for a vacancy on RTP and is selected among thousands of candidates for the role of speaker. Her name is Manuela Moura Guedes.

She auditions, convinced that she will join the News team, but she ends up in Entertainment. She stays in that field for three years. After hosting the second Festival da Canção, she makes an ultimatum: she either joins the News team or leaves RTP. Her boldness pays off.

Even though she was already experienced in front of the cameras, Manuela Moura Guedes decides to start from the beginning. She joins the programme "Intercâmbio Regional" and later joins "País País". She is the youngest in the programme's newsroom.

Her first story takes her to Freiria, where she portrays life in the municipality through the story of two children. She ends up joining "Telejornal".

The arrival of the Brazilian musician João Gilberto to Lisbon, an assignment that keeps her awake for hours, is her first news piece. It wasn't easy for her to be taken seriously as a journalist. She feels the need to change her public image and to stand out due to her credibility.

After a year in the News team, she develops the first journalistic investigation on the field. It was a news piece about a deal involving Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Lisbon City Council) and Sporting Clube de Portugal. A news report that turned her into a target of insults, vandalism and the threat of legal action. She decides to sue Sporting's newspaper and the team's President, João Rocha. The Court says she's right. She's the first Portuguese journalist to "sue someone for defamation due to the exercise of Journalism".

Manuela Moura Guedes goes from the Society department to Politics, becoming the main reporter of the area on RTP. She asks Cavaco Silva a question about a contradiction regarding the radio law. The politician insists that there is no contradiction. The journalist confronts him with the dispatch. The RTP team hurries back to the newsroom, so that the piece would make it to Telejornal. Manuela Moura Guedes moves to the Society department the next day.

She eventually joins Jornal das 9, on Canal 2. Her path in the News is made of many struggles and a constant questioning approach. Certain news pieces aren't even aired. In the newsrooms she leads, she tries to promote the idea of a journalist as a storyteller.

Stories such as the poverty of the families of Setúbal, a news piece that leaves a mark on her career. The report forces the Government to admit to the country that there's still hunger in Portugal. She leaves daily news to host Raios e Coriscos, an innovative format of interview and debate. Initially with bad reviews by the critics, the programme becomes a success. Without investment, she refuses to host a second season.

She decides to leave RTP on that very same day. She interrupts her career in Journalism in 1995, the year she is elected deputy in Assembleia da República. An experience that allows her to see politics from the inside and Journalism from the outside. The sight isn't pleasant. She is even boycotted by her former work colleagues.

She returns to Journalism on TVI.