Evaluation by journalists regarding information access from institutions is unfavourable. Just 38.3 per cent of institutions were evaluated positively about their willingness to share information, 42.3 per cent for the reliability and precision of the given information, and 32.8 per cent for timely delivery of said information. This resulted in an average of 37.8 per cent positive evaluations. Since 2007, the curve has been changing, with the lowest average at 30 per cent and the highest at 44 per cent (ANP, 2019).
The journalists interviewed confirmed the difficulty of accessing certain sources and having to go through the bureaucracy of communication managers. After the 2019 protests, it was particularly difficult to obtain data from the police. The perception of journalists about access to information in the last five years also varied. It registered only one relevant improvement, in 2009, when the law about public information access was enacted (widely known as Transparency Law) (ANP, 2019; Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications, 2014). This law created the Council for Transparency, an autonomous institution that enforces these regulations. The legislation advocated for websites of public institutions to have permanent access to their information – what is called “active transparency”. At the same time, it gave citizens the right to access this information; therefore, one can make transparency requests to which every organisation must respond, unless there are reasons meriting secrecy or reservations about the information. This tool, although meant for every citizen, is only fully effective with certain knowledge of its workings. Therefore, journalists have been educating themselves on how to use it, as well as learning strategies so the information they receive is most useful and readily usable. Because the actual information delivery is slow, even through this process, it is mainly used by journalists working in investigative and long-form journalism, and less frequently in daily work.
This explains the fact that, in an evaluation of 12 mechanisms to obtain public information, the use of this law is only at seventh place. Journalists evaluate other tools as more efficient ways to access public information: direct consultation with sources, formal interviews, and direct communication through WhatsApp and similar mobile applications (ANP, 2019). However, when evaluating specifically this law as a tool, after 35 per cent positive evaluations within its first year of enactment, these dropped to as low as 28 per cent until 2015. However, it later saw a constant improvement in its evaluation until 2017, which has sustained at 41 per cent for both 2018 and 2019 since then.
