The traditional section of letters to the editor is the most common way for people to participate in the news process. It exists in every newspaper, sometimes augmented with other small sections where the readers’ opinion or the readers’ active participation, either with texts or with photos or videos is welcome.
The Internet and the development of these newspapers’ online editions have strongly expanded opportunities for public participation, with comments on the news, voting in daily opinion polls, and so on. The newspapers are open to these forms of participation and encourage them, but in a rather disorganised way as they do not usually promote real public discussions or debates, and they do not have regular contacts with the readers. Of course, there are cases where the “commentary boxes” that follow the news turn to unpleasant or nasty debates among readers with different opinions. The strategy of dealing with these commentaries varies among different media outlets. In most cases, comments are moderated, either automatically by software that prevents the use of some words, or by the readers themselves who apply voluntarily to self-regulate. When more sensitive issues come to the news, media sometimes decide to close the commentary boxes, to prevent the hateful discourse or similar abuse.
Since most media are now also present on social media (particularly on Facebook and Twitter), with pages that are updated almost by the minute, there are increasing opportunities for the public to comment on all the issues that are in the news.
Some national radio stations (TSF, Antena Um), as well as a cable television channels (SIC Notícias) have daily forums open to the public, to discuss a given subject according to the news of the day. But not all of them agree with this. The leading Radio Renascença is against forums in which “anyone can say anything”. In fact, now and then these forums are used by organised groups or even by political parties to distribute their propaganda in a seemingly spontaneous way.
In public television and radio, an Opinion Council represents different areas and social groups. They are asked to give their opinion about PBS strategy programming, and in some situations, they have a binding vote such as in the appointment of a new ombudsperson for television and radio.
The editors we interviewed for this report are generally rather sceptical about user-generated content. In spite of interesting promises about so-called citizen journalism some years ago, they now tend to limit the participation of the public only to very specific situations such as if no journalists could reach the place where events occurred. In general, readers and viewers “should be regarded as information sources, not as potential journalists”, as one editor-in-chief told us.
