There are 480,300 foreigners living in the country. The largest group (105,400) comes from Brazil, which means they have no linguistic barriers to accessing the national media. The same is true of other communities coming from former Portuguese colonies such as Cape Verde, Angola, and Guinea which together have 69,100 residents in Portugal. But, in recent years, the percentage of immigrants from Eastern European countries has grown rapidly. For example, there are presently 29,200 Ukrainians and 30,900 Rumanians. The Chinese community is also relevant, with 25,300 residents. In terms of European citizens, the larger shares come from the United Kingdom (26,400) and France (19,700). Dozens of other nationalities are present in Portugal, but with relatively low figures (SEF, 2019).
There are a couple of newspapers written in foreign languages (in some cases, bilingual), but they are not relevant in the media landscape since circulation figures are at most in the hundreds. They were usually created by the foreigner communities’ associations, of which there are about 40 in Portugal, according to the High Commission for Migration, a public institution directly dependent of the Presidency of the Ministers Council (ACM, 2020a). There is also a Commission for Equality and Against Racial Discrimination, created by law in 2017 (ACM, 2020b).
There are sometimes complaints made by those communities regarding the way immigrants are misrepresented and mistreated by the mainstream media. A study funded by ERC and conducted by a group of scholars concluded that between 2003 and 2008, the visibility of immigrants in the mainstream media was usually associated with “crime” and “social transgression” (Férin, 2009: 124). Moreover, the news reporting on those issues tends to give a voice to police, security forces, and institutional sources, rather than to immigrants’ associations or common people from these communities of foreigners (Férin, 2009). More recently (2018), ERC conducted another study about sociocultural diversity in the media between 2015 and 2017 and concluded that only 3 per cent of the news in the prime-time newscasts in open access television had some references to immigrants, refugees, or exiled people in Portugal (ERC, 2019b). According to the study, they are the central focus of a piece of news especially when there is some negative situation such as a crime or illicit behaviour.
This same study also monitored the presence of different religious themes in prime-time television news and found out that only 6 per cent of their airtime had some reference to these themes. There is a clear prevalence of Catholicism which made up 66 per cent of the references, against 18 per cent of Islam and 8 per cent of Judaism. When talking about Catholicism, a central actor of that news is Pope Francis. The study shows that when Islam is in the news, it most often has some connection with armed conflicts or terrorist attacks (ERC, 2019b).
All the open access television channels, either because of the public service remit (RTP1 and RTP2) or because of the concession contract they signed (SIC and TVI) have an obligation towards pluralism and diversity in their programming. Specifically, they must pay attention to cultural diversity and the interests of minority groups and are subject to the scrutiny of the media regulator (ERC). In 2018, ERC concluded that RTP1 devoted to these specific areas a total of 9 hours, 56 minutes, and 07 seconds of airtime, while SIC had 103 hours, 25 minutes, and 51 seconds (about 1.5%) and TVI had only one weekly programme dedicated to minority groups. The channel that pays most attention to these themes (RTP2) is the one with less audience share, and much of the time devoted to them has to do with time offered to different religious programmes (ERC, 2019c).
A pluri-annual plan was set up in 2017 by the regulatory entity regarding people with disabilities or special needs, with specific obligations for the main television operators on subtitles in Portuguese and sign language. This implies that a minimum of 20 hours a week of a diverse set of programmes must have subtitles, and a minimum of 12 hours a week plus one full newscast a week must be delivered in sign language too. The conclusion made by ERC shows that all television channels not only fulfilled but also largely exceeded, those obligations.
The enormous increase of the Internet’s reach, and particularly the strong development of weblogs and social media, brought new possibilities for various minorities (political, religious, sexual, cultural, etc.) to have their own information flows, although not ones as visible as those in mainstream media.
