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Belga News Agency

Belgian news agency

Field	Value
logo	Logo of Belga News Agency.svg
image	Voormalige opslagplaats Stiel & Rothschild, Arduinkaai 28-29.jpg
image_caption	Headquarters in Brussels
type	Société anonyme
industry	News agency
founded	August 20, 1920
founder	Maurice Travailleur
hq_location	Quai aux Pierres de Taille / Arduinkaai 28–29
hq_location_city	1000 City of Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region
hq_location_country	Belgium
key_people	{{ubl
website

|Patrick Lacroix (CEO) |Hans Vandendriessche (editor-in-chief)

Belga News Agency (abbr. Belga) is the only national news agency of Belgium and serves as the main supplier of daily news to Belgian media. It was founded in 1920, primarily by Maurice Travailleur, as the Société Anonyme Agence Télégraphique Belge. Following a reform in 1970, the agency consists of two independent departments for Dutch and French-language reporting. As of 2024, Belga employs around 80 permanent journalists and 30 local correspondents, overseen by an editor-in-chief. Since December 2014, the agency has been headquartered in the Quays or Sainte-Catherine/Sint-Katelijne Quarter of Brussels. It is an active member of the European Alliance of News Agencies.

History

Founded by engineer Maurice Travailleur with the key involvement of journalist Pierre-Marie Olivier, King Albert I of Belgium, and the king's secretary M. L. Gérard on August 20, 1920, the Société Anonyme Agence Télégraphique Belge (; abbreviated to Belga) was established to position Belgium in the international information process after World War I, when its policy of obligatory neutrality had ended. The starting capital amounted to five million francs, almost entirely provided by industrial and banking companies. The agency began functioning on January 1 the next year, with Travailleur serving as the first president of its board of directors. During the Nazi German occupation of Belgium, Belga was shut down, its board and editors-in-chief were arrested, and the agency was restarted by the occupation government in January 1941 as "Belga Press," which almost exclusively sourced information from the Nazi press agency .

Following the Allied liberation of 1944, Travailleur, Antoine Seyl, and a few former staff members reestablished Belga, with operations continuing again on September 5 that year. Also in the same year, Belga began issuing reports in Dutch, previously being an exclusively Francophone agency. Increasing regionalist sentiments in the 1960s provoked a reform of the production process in 1970: two equally-sized departments, one for Dutch and the other for French, would produce content independently of the other within the same newsroom.

Description

Structure

Belga is the main and only national news agency in Belgium, relying on some 80 permanent journalists working in the two main national languages, as well as on 30 local correspondents, .{{Free-content attribution

Content

Aside from minor reporting on European politics in Brussels, the agency primarily produces news video, photographs or audio regarding domestic affairs within Belgium. News regarding international affairs is translated from foreign European agencies.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

References

"EANA Member Agencies".
Carolan, Ciara. (2024-10-11). "Belga News Agency the latest victim in a wave of cyberattacks". [[The Brussels Times]].
Sacré, Jean-François. (2016-01-22). "L'agence Belga a un nouveau patron". [[L'Echo]].

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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