UNDER FIRE: news coverage of the Russian side of the war in Ukraine as combat : The case of Bruno Amaral de Carvalho

Based on the case of freelance journalist Bruno Amaral de Carvalho, we identify and analyze the two types of battles he was involved in to guarantee coverage of the war in Ukraine for CNN Portugal, from the Russian side, between March and October 2022. As well as being involved in the information war that, since 2014, has shaped two metanarrative fields in relation to Ukraine, the journalist, the only one working on this side of the war for the Portuguese media in the period under analysis, had to combat the strategies of symbolic degradation directed at him by politicians and journalists, in the form of attacks on his character and independence. Our study collects the content produced by Bruno Amaral de Carvalho for CNN Portugal, classifying it according to these metanarrative fields, and breaks down and analyzes the process of symbolic degradation that forced the journalist into this double combat.Key words: Metanarratives. Journalism. Propaganda. Information war. Symbolic degradation