Belga News Agency
Belga News Agency 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 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.