There is only one news agency (in which the state is a major shareholder), and its presence as a news source for the media continues to be very relevant. Agência de Notícias de Portugal (Lusa)has newsrooms in Lisbon and Oporto, regional delegations in all the districts, as well as some presence abroad such as in former colonies, Portuguese-speaking countries, and in major European capitals. Besides the provision of news and photos, the agency has recently also started providing its clients with audio and video as well, thus increasing its presence across media.
It is not uncommon for journalists, following orders from above, to hide the fact that a piece of news has Lusa as its source by either not quoting the source or rewriting the source material to make it look original. This trend increased in the online sections of media companies, where most of the newsrooms are composed of very few, and very young professionals, which causes most of the journalistic work to be no more than desk work. Because the speed of publication is the first rule in many information websites, the importance of the agency in breaking news is huge, turning it into “the biggest agenda-setter in the country”, to quote one of the editors we interviewed. There is also a relatively high interdependence among most of the news media. Morning newspapers usually set the agenda for television and radio news bulletins in the morning, evening television newscasts often set the agenda for newspapers the next day, and all of them are permanently watching what the competitors diffuse through social media to catch up. It is the so-called “circular circulation of information”, with news media frequently talking to each other about the same issues.
As for news from abroad, the dependence on international news agencies is also high. Having their own full-time journalists working abroad is rare among Portuguese news media. The public broadcast, RTP, is more present than any other media outlet and has some correspondents in Brussels (to cover issues related with EU), plus one or two in Paris, Madrid, Washington, Rio de Janeiro.
Two other trends are widespread: the high dependence on institutional, official sources and the increasing ability of public relations (PR) organisations to get their material placed as news. A study on the origin of political news in the four main Portuguese dailies (Ribeiro, 2009) showed that about 60 per cent of news items originated directly from PR material or communication agencies rather than from the media themselves. As one leading PR manager then said, “For better and for worse, news sources are installed in the newsrooms” (as cited inSouza, 2008). The situation has not changed much in this respect.
In recent years, some efforts have been made to have more first-hand news and information, with more investment in investigative reporting, either for large features or for medium pieces of work to be included in daily television newscasts. As told by the editors we interviewed, the news media in our sample try to have one or two journalists permanently free from day-to-day agenda needs in order to be able to investigate. Two of them even have a small team permanently devoted to investigative reporting. Some newspapers are also involved in international cooperation, particularly the weekly Expresso, which is part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. This network has been responsible for important public revelations recently, such as Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, China Cables, Luanda Leaks, and so on. Still, all these efforts are relatively minor when compared to the larger picture of news which is more similar than it is different, with the same sources used across media. There now exist devoted social media teams in all newsrooms which closely follow discussions on social media platforms. This leads to the growing influence of social media in the process of agenda-setting, which further hampers the originality and autonomy of news outlets.
Considering the diversity of news sources in terms of gender we see that the strong male presence in the public sphere is also reflected in the Portuguese media landscape. A study by the The Portuguese Regulatory Authority for the Media (ERC, 2019b), covering the years 2015–2017 analysed gender diversity of news sources in the prime-time news bulletins of the main television channels – RTP1, RTP2, SIC, TVI, CMTV. The results showed that 69–75 per cent (according to the different channels) of those sources are male, while only 24–29 per cent are female (the rest have both or are not identifiable). In this study, the regulator urged television channels to pay more attention to these issues, particularly when reporting on “social contexts where women are present, but that are consistently represented in the news by men [emphasis original]” (ERC, 2019b: 67).
