The Portuguese media landscape has been strongly influenced by its specific political, economic, cultural and social evolution during the last decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st. Five main factors should be considered:
- The small size of the country (population of 10.3 million), associated with a very low rate of news media consumption, which makes it difficult for media outlets to achieve sufficient scale to be viable;
- The economic weakness of the country (an annual GDP of €18.550 per capita – , when the average for EU/28 countries is € 28.630 –Eurostat, 2019) which means low purchasing power for media consumers and little advertising for the media industry;
- The rather brief experience of life in democracy, after almost half a century (from 1926 to 1974) of political dictatorship, when basic rights – freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association – were either forbidden or strictly controlled;
- The long-standing tradition of a centralized society, very dependent on the State and with low levels of autonomous social dynamism – which tends to ‘solve’ problems at the macro-level of the law, but not necessarily at the micro-level of actual practices;
- The faster development of the country (in economic, cultural and technological terms) in more recent years, particularly after joining the European Union in 1986.
The legal and regulatory framework for the media still has marks of the revolutionary period lived in the country between 1974 and 1975, when democracy was recovered and important changes occurred: for some years, the State was the owner of virtually all the media, as a result of nationalization of the main industries. When the democratic regime stabilized and began to follow Western European patterns, in the 1980s, all print media were privatized again and new commercial projects emerged. Nowadays, the presence of the State as a shareholder in the media is reduced to public television and public radio, as well as to the national news agency.
As a result of this political evolution, the legal framework for the media is different from that of other countries with a liberal tradition. There are many laws: a Press Law, a Radio Law, a Television Law, a PBS Law, a Journalist Statute, an Electronic Communications Law, an Advertising Law, a Law for the Media Regulatory Entity. The State has been very ‘present’ in terms of media regulation, although the effective respect for the laws raises frequent doubts.
The importance granted to this sector is evident when we look at the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic itself. Freedom of expression and freedom of information have constitutional dignity (art. 37), as do freedom of the press and of the mass media (art. 38), the obligation of media regulation through an administrative entity (art. 39) and the rights to reply, to rectify, to respond politically and to have access to broadcast time (art. 40). The obligation of the State to offer a national public service of radio and television is also inscribed there. Some rights of the journalists – the right to participate in the “editorial orientation” of the news media they work for, the right of access to official information sources, the right to elect newsroom councils – have constitutional dignity as well.
International rankings
– Freedom House Global Freedom: Portugal – Status “free” (Score: 96 out of 100 in 2020; the same as in 2018) (Freedom House, 2020)
– V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy; Annual Democracy Report 2019)
- Liberal Democracy Index 2018: Portugal ranges in the Top 10% bracket (rank 8 of all countries), a little down since 2008 (0.82 now, 0.86 then)
- Freedom of Expression Index 2018: Portugal ranks 16 of all countries (V-Dem, 2019)
– Reporters Without Borders – World Press Freedom Index
Portugal is nr. 10 in the ranking (2020), with 11.83. It was nr. 14 in 2018, with 14.17
– Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom at the European University Institute in Florence – According to the Media Pluralism Monitor, the risks to media pluralism in Portugal were considered low for 12 indicators, medium for 4 indicators and high for 4 indicators (these four referring to universal reach of traditional media and access to internet, media ownership concentration, access to media for minorities, and media literacy) (Cádima et al, 2017).
Covid-19 pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic had a strong impact in all the Portuguese media. On the one side, media consumption rose to levels never felt before, especially in what concerns television and online news (newspapers almost lost their paper editions, because the general confinement rules for everybody during three months made it impossible to go out to buy a paper copy – and many newspaper shops also closed for weeks). Just to have an idea, the four main dailies together had a reach online of 10.4 million persons in December 2019, and in April 2020 they had a reach of 12.8 million, an increase of 23% (Marktest – NetAudience). In spite of the paywalls they all have put in place, they all decided to give free access to all content somehow related with the pandemic. While they did this, they also tried to increase their online subscriptions, making marketing campaigns and offering even more discounts than usually, thus convincing people of the importance of having good timely information, particularly in difficult occasions like this. And many of them had good results here. Actually, they needed them: with paper sales decreasing and advertising virtually disappearing from their pages (because most industry and commerce was inactive), they felt serious problems in order to keep the business running and to pay their workers. Most companies were forced to put a lot of journalists in lay-off (with the State in charge of a part of their salary), while almost all the newsroom was obliged to work from home, using computer, smartphone and Skype or Zoom to keep in touch with each other.
In May 2020, in the sequence this serious crisis and of the big losses for news media in advertising revenues, the government decided to grant them an emergency aid. A total of €15 million were distributed by different media (Television, Radio, Press, Online), in the form of advertising campaigns paid in advance. There was some controversy about the criteria followed by the government to allocate the different amounts to the various media, and two online publications (by coincidence, two publications that would receive a small amount of money and also known as very critical of the present government, led by the Socialist Party) even decided to refuse those advertising campaigns, claiming they would do that in the name of total independence from the political power.
In the meantime, a couple of studies and surveys were launched, either by journalists institutions (Journalists’ Union, Commission for the Professional Chart) or by research centres from Universities, trying to evaluate the seriousness of these impacts in the news media and to understand the challenges brought by the pandemic crisis to the journalistic work.
Media global landscape
Regarding the media landscape in general terms, television consumption is very high in Portugal, but more for entertainment than for information. Since 1992, public television has coexisted with two private channels, one of them leading in terms of audience. There is also an increasing number of channels distributed by cable and paid by subscription. The cable network presently covers 88% of Portuguese households, reaching ca. 4 million inhabitants (ANACOM).
Radio has both a national and a regional/local presence. The liberalization of the sector occurred in the late 1980s and hundreds of stations were then launched. Many of them did not survive and, at the local level, only a few have their own information service. The public service is present in radio through three different channels, but the leading station is owned by the Catholic Church.
Newspapers have modernized only recently. According to the general world trend, their circulation rates have been falling, although the subscriptions for online editions are rising. Apart from the five daily national newspapers, plus one online only news medium, Portugal also has three daily sports newspapers and one economy daily. The biggest daily newspaper sells 76.056 copies a day, according to data from 2019 — it sold 129.219 copies in 2010 (APCT).
The Internet is developing very fast – 76.2% of the population regularly uses it –, in terms of both use of computers and broadband access. Most media companies have been investing in their websites, usually associated with a specific title (a newspaper, a radio or TV channel), but with information content that goes beyond that.
The sample
The general, quantitative data underlying this report refer to the whole country and to all news media. Other data, more qualitative, were gathered among a sample of media companies intended to be somehow representative of the Portuguese situation (in terms of mass-media primarily devoted to news and information). In these cases, the data and opinions were gathered both through access to internal documents and through personal interviews with the editors-in-chief. Interviews with members of different newsrooms were also conducted in order to obtain data from the “rank-and-file” journalists and their practical experience. The interviews were made in late 2019 and early 2020 months. Besides representatives of the media chosen for our sample, we conducted one more formal interview with the president of the journalists’ union (Sindicato dos Jornalistas), the only national-wide professional association of this kind. The four main criteria for our choice were: to have a balanced presence of public and commercial media (which applies to television), to guarantee the presence of different types of media (newspaper, radio, television, on-line), to focus on the most relevant media in terms of news and information, to have a balanced presence of ‘popular’ (audience-driven) and ‘quality’ (elite-driven) media. No regional or local news media were chosen for this sample, because they are not relevant in the country’s media landscape (dozens of very small newspapers or radios, with a very low reach). Given the dimension of the country, some daily newspapers labelled as ‘national’ are actually regional, with a circulation concentrated either in the North half or in the South half of Portugal.
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Regarding on-line media, the leading positions in Portugal belonged consistently to the on-line versions of traditional print media. In the last years, the situation changed a little, with the launching (in 2014) of an online-only news medium – Observador – which has gained some relevance now. Because of that, we decided to include it in our sample. Still, when it comes to traditional newspapers, we looked both at their print and on-line editions, thus taking into consideration the on-line flow of information that is increasingly important for them, even in terms of sales (subscriptions).
Conclusions
Trying to summarize:
- In economic terms, the structural weakness of the Portuguese media industry, worsened by the present crisis, makes it difficult to run a profitable business and to guarantee good conditions for journalists to do their work.
- In political terms, the relatively recent conquest of democracy, after a long period of dictatorship and of isolation from the outside world, helps to explain the strong presence of a centralized State and the absence (or fragility) of autonomous social dynamics. In accordance, the existence of important progressive laws is not always strong enough to counterbalance the weight of practices in the day-by-day routines.
- In cultural terms, a long history of low literacy and of low reading habits is somehow responsible for very low rates of media consumption – with the exception of television -, although the fast development of the Internet may help to change things.
Media in Portugal have made an important contribution to democracy, and gave a precious help to consolidate democracy itself. But there still seems to be a great deal to do in order to guarantee that this contribution goes beyond the formal aspects of media functioning and pays attention to such issues as quality of news and information, people’s media literacy, public participation and commitment for citizenship.
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Data sources
ANACOM – Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações. <www.anacom.pt>
APCT – Associação Portuguesa para o Controlo de Tiragem e Circulação. <http://site.apct.pt/homepage_00.aspx>
CCPJ – Comissão da Carteira Profissional de Jornalista < https://www.ccpj.pt/>
EIGE – European Institute for Gender Equality. Statistic Database. Portugal. <https://eige.europa.eu/gender-statistics/dgs>
ERC – Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social. Relatórios de Regulação, 2009 – 2010 – 2018. <www.erc.pt>
ERC (2018) A diversidade sociocultural nos media (2015-2017).
ERC (2019) Relatório de avaliação da observância do princípio do pluralism politico em 2018. <http://www.erc.pt/pt/estudos-e-publicacoes/relatorios-do-pluralismo-politico-partidario/relatorio-de-avaliacao-da-observancia-do-principio-do-pluralismo-politico-em-2018>
EUROSTAT
< http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/>
INE – Instituto Nacional de Estatística. Estatística das Comunicações 2006 and 2009.
MARKTEST – Anuários de Media & Publicidade, 2009 and 2018. <http://www.marktest.com/wap/g/?e=2>
MARKTEST – NetAudience
OBERCOM – Anuários da Comunicação, 2009. <http://www.obercom.pt/>
PORDATA – Base de Dados Portugal Contemporâneo <http://www.pordata.pt/azap_runtime/>
REUTERS INSTITUTE – Digital News Reports (DNR)
RTP – Radio e Televisão Portuguesa. Relatório para a Igualdade de Género, Cidadania e Não Discriminação de 2019. <https://media.rtp.pt/empresa/informacao/relatorio-igualdade-genero/>
SJ – Sindicato dos Jornalistas <http://www.jornalistas.online.pt/>
WAN – World Association of Newspapers (2009), World Press Trends.
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