As explained above, there is not a national self-regulatory entity (like a Press Council), although there are several self-regulation instruments in the leading news media.
Everyone has an Editorial Statute, with a mission statement emphasizing their independence from political and economic powers, their respect for the people’s fundamental rights, their commitment to democratic values, and their attachment to the journalistic ethical principles. But these are, in most cases, just formal statements with very general intentions. Some of these media have more detailed internal accountability mechanisms, which is the case for, e.g., Expresso (with a Code of Conduct dealing with such issues as objectivity, accuracy, plagiarism, identification of information sources, error correction, limits to gifts offered to journalists, etc.), Público (with a Style Book that has a first part entirely devoted to ethical questions, to journalism social responsibility, to conflict of interests, etc.), or RTP (with an Editorial Statute that underlines the particular responsibilities of a public service television, the obligation to promote pluralism and diversity).
A news ombudsman has existed since 1997 in one of the five national dailies (Público). Two other dailies had an ombudsman for several years (Diário de Notícias and Jornal de Notícias), but the position is vacant now – according to our sources, financial constraints have obliged media outlets to invest less in these instruments of ‘quality control’. Since 2006, there has also been a news ombudsman in public television and another one in public radio3. They, too, have a broadcasting time every week, prepared under their exclusive responsibility.
As for the right of reply, it is a constitutional obligation.
