This article reveals how the legal nature of Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), a state-owned communications company linked to the Federal Government, favored the interference of the Executive Power. To do so, it recapitulates its creation, between 2007 and 2008, and examines how its design left loopholes for the edition of administrative measures in order to control it. Without independence both on management and on journalistic agenda, the EBC was subject to the predilections of the Presidency, both under Lula (until 2010) and Dilma (2011-2016), as well as, much less discreetly, under Michel Temer (2016-2018) and Jair Bolsonaro (since 2019). Based on the analysis of aspects of legislation and practical cases, the article demonstrates that the legal nature of the EBC, an entity of indirect administration whose management is entirely controlled by the Executive, seemed to be incompatible with the ideals of democratic public communication.
