The Journalist Statute grants journalists a set of important rights and guarantees in order to protect their activity: the right to independence and to “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”, the right to “professional secrecy” (meaning that he/she is allowed not to disclose the identity of his/her sources4).
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 its 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 of many of them, 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 a number of situations to be considered:
- the owner of the reference daily Público is one of the biggest businessmen in the country (SONAE group), whose major assets are supermarkets and shopping centres;
- Controlinvest, 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 in transmission rights for football games;
- Cofina, the owner of the dailies Correio da Manhã, Record (sports), Jornal de Negócios (economy), Destak and Metro (free), has various interests in industrial areas;
- the owner of the leading radio station, Rádio Renascença, is the Catholic Church, which also owns a number of small regional newspapers.
