The Journalist Statute, which is actually a law approved by the Parliament, grants journalists a set of important rights and guarantees to protect their activity. The most relevants are the right to independence and “free creation and expression” (containing the so-called “consciousness clause”), the right “to participate in the editorial orientation” of the media, the right of access to “official sources of information” and to “public places”, and the right to “professional secrecy” which means that they are allowed not to disclose the identity of their sources (a shield law) (Assembleia da República, 1999)[i].
This does not mean, however, that problems do not arise now and then. For example, the separation of the editorial area and management is not respected in all situations. In 2009, a weekly news bulletin of the leading television channel TVI which had gained a reputation for being very strongly against the Portuguese prime minister was terminated by a direct order coming from the board of managers, and not by the editor-in-chief. This was considered illegal by ERC, but the fact is that the news bulletin did not show up again.
There seems to be a feeling among most journalists that due to the precarious situation that many of them are in, it is not easy to defend those rights. Keeping silent and trying not to raise too many questions is apparently an option more and more followed by journalists, particularly when media companies are economically weak or when journalists are young interns trying to get a more stable job.
In terms of diagonal concentration or cross-media ownership, there are also several situations to consider:
- The owner of the reference daily Público is one of the biggest businesspersons in the country (SONAE group), whose major assets are supermarkets and shopping centres.
- Global Media, the owner of the dailies Jornal de Notícias, Diário de Notícias, and O Jogo (sports), as well as of SporTV (cable), has important interests in the advertising industry, in the football industry, and transmission rights for football games.
- Cofina, the owner of the dailies Correio da Manhã, Record (sports), Jornal de Negócios (economy), and Destak (free), has various interests in different industrial areas.
- The owner of the leading radio station, Rádio Renascença, is the Catholic Church, which also owns several small regional newspapers.
Despite it all this, the idea is that journalistic independence from these private interests is the general rule, rather than the exception. However, it is also true that some self-censorship temptations (or real actions) are sometimes reported privately by reporters, particularly in a time of great economic difficulties in the media industry, with companies downsizing their workforce or just closing.
[i] This traditional right to journalists’ professional secrecy was changed in the last revision of the Statute. The right to not disclose the identity of information sources is still granted in general terms, but an exception is previewed in the Penal Code. This means that, if and when a judge in a court of law decides that the identity of an information source is essential to pursuing justice, the journalist may be compelled to reveal it. Nevertheless, the journalists’ Code of Ethics plainly states that those professionals must not disclose the identity of their sources. Because of this, one journalist has already been convicted in court because, in spite of an order given by the judge, he insisted on protecting his sources.
