The Regulatory Media Entity (ERC) must guarantee that the news media respect everyone’s rights, act with independence, fairness, and accuracy, allow the exercise of the right of reply, respect pluralism, and promote diversity, and so on. In this context, it acts as a clear control mechanism of media performance, either on its initiative or because of complaints received from the public. It started working in 2006 though there was another institution with a similar purpose before. There are political controversies about its statute since its members are appointed by the Parliament, according to nominations supported by the biggest political parties and about the need for media regulation that is contested by some media owners and editors according to an increasingly disseminated neo-liberal ideology. However, the fact is that some more attention is being paid to media performance and to the media’s complex roles in contemporary societies.
Journalistic work is also monitored and controlled by the CCPJ, which has jurisdiction over good practices and ethical standards in the media. As explained before (see Indicator E6–Content monitoring instruments), an Ethics Council exists within the Journalists’ Union (SJ), often nurturing and fostering the public discussion of media performance and journalistic work.
Besides this, the general landscape concerning news monitoring and debate within the journalistic community is not very promising. The Journalists’ Club publishes a bi-monthly magazine (Jornalismo e Jornalistas) and regularly updates an online site devoted to media and journalism issues, where some interesting debates arise from time to time. A couple of blogs made by journalists (individual or collective) also exist. Nowadays, a dozen of them are the most consistent, attentive, and stimulating instruments for media analysis and media criticism. As explained before, some Facebook pages devoted to media scrutiny and criticism are very popular these days, gathering thousands of followers.
The role played by universities that offer journalism courses and journalism or media research centres is relevant as well. Some of them have been responsible, during recent years, for the publication of dozens of books dealing with media issues. Most of the former press ombudspersons also published books with a selection of their public interventions that are often used in schools and training institutions for journalists. This means that the discussion of these questions is now more open to the public than it used to be when these books circulated only within the academy. Besides this, some observatories of media performance also play a relevant role in this intersection between the academy and the audience.
