If there was any room left for doubt, the closing months of 2015 were enough to prove that Portuguese journalism is facing a serious challenge from which it probably won’t emerge the same. From October to December 2015, four media groups announced that they preparing to lay off workers, including journalists.
These recent cuts are a continuation of the long-term trend: between 2007 and 2014, more than 1,200 journalists — about 20 per cent of the total number of media professionals — have lost their jobs in Portugal, according to a study by Observatório da Comunicação.
The latest round of attrition began in November 2015 when the largest Portuguese media conglomerate Impresa announced it would terminate the contracts of 60 people, 20 of whom worked for the television channel SIC.
In December, the management of Público, a newspaper, announced that, due to a predicted €3 million in losses for the year of 2015, it was launching a voluntary redundancy programme for journalists and other professionals. The announcement came with a deadline: 6 January would be the last day for workers to reach a settlement with the managers. Index on Censorship has learned from an employee at the paper that 24 people have reached a deal and are set to leave the newspaper.
Despite the voluntary redundancies and cuts that included the folding of 2, the newspaper’s Sunday magazine, the company said that more layoffs may be required to reach its cost reduction targets. Público’s management has not yet to announced if more staff cuts will be made.
Público is owned by SonaeCom, a branch of Sonae, one of the biggest companies in Portugal. In 2014, Sonae had a turnover of €4.9 billion.
Within days, Diário Económico, Portugal’s leading business newspaper, revealed that due to a €30 million debt, fiscal authorities appropriated the title’s revenues until it solved its financial problems. In a statement to the newspaper Expresso, the editor-in-chief of Diário Económico, Raúl Vaz, admitted that the “situation has become much worse and more complicated, not to say dramatic”. The 26-year-old title may be forced to close, leaving 160 unemployed.
The most unusual of all dismissals happened at the Newshold media group, owned by Angolan banker and businessman Álvaro Sobrinho. On 30 November, employees at the Newshold newspapers Sol and i were told that the company was going to withdraw its investment in the two titles after claiming losses of €4.4 million and €3.8 million, respectively. The papers wouldn’t be folded under the Newshold plan, which would transfer them to a new management entity but axe two-thirds of the staff.
In the Newshold case, Mário Ramires, then CEO of the company, called a newsroom meeting at which he requested that employees staying with the papers sign new contracts that included smaller salaries. Crucially the new contracts would offer less legal compensation in the event of another round of layoffs, according to the recording of the meeting.
Ramires then asked the nearly 120 people who were losing their jobs to give up legal compensation that the company is obliged to pay under Portuguese law. He told the departing staffers that if they didn’t accept this, they would be putting the future of the papers and their colleagues’ jobs in jeopardy.
“All companies die today, they’ve been broke a long time ago. Nobody is entitled to anything because the companies have no money,” Ramires is reported to have said to his employees. “Whoever feels like crying, complaining that this is too tough and stuff like that, it’s best for them go home this second.”
The two-hour meeting was filmed with the consent of the employees. Two days later, following a visit by representatives of the Journalists Union to the news offices of i and Sol, Ramires ordered the audio of the meeting to be published on the websites of both titles. In it, Ramires, who is now editor-in-chief of the two newspapers, mentioned his wife and two sons, who he brought to the meeting. “I’m not giving up, and even if everybody jumps boat I will not give up,” he said. “And that’s why I brought my children here.”
The Journalists Union issued a statement appealing to all the Newshold journalist to “not sign, for the time being, any documents” presented to them. However, as one employee involved in the process who asked to not be named told Index, all the journalists signed documents in which they absolved the company a legal requirement to open a bank account where severance payments would be set aside. Ramires said the company could not afford to open the account at the time and assured the exiting employees that they would receive their money in January 2016, which occurred for most of the journalists. Some of the former employees are involved in disputes over vacation time and have not yet settled with the company.
Ana Luísa Rodrigues is the acting president of the Portuguese Union of Journalists and a journalist for RTP, Portugal’s public television channel. In an interview with Mapping Media Freedom correspondent João de Almeida Dias, Rodrigues said she believes that the shortage of journalists working in newsrooms — a consequence of several collective layoffs that took place in the past five years — has a negative effect democracy and press freedom in the country. Another effect has been “numbing” of media workers that avoid raising questions in fear of losing their jobs.
Index: Do you feel that the quality of the journalism that is made in Portugal has decreased as a consequence of fewer people working in the media?
Rodrigues: I think it’s there for everyone to see, it’s not just us journalists who notice it. Consumers feel that too. For example, it’s now commonplace for two newspapers to have the exact same article. That often happens in Jornal de Notícias and Diário de Notícias [two newspapers owned by the Global Media group], where they publish the same content written by the same journalist. So here’s two newspapers, which are in theory made for two different audiences, publishing the same article. And this happens with topics of the utmost importance, sometimes they have the same front page headline. This is not an exception, it has become the rule. We’re now beginning to accept this as normal. But why should it be normal?
Index: Who is to blame for the layoffs?
Rodrigues: I’m not in a position to pass judgment, but it’s important to point out a few things. First, this is an administrative decision which is made by people who think that running a media business is the same as running a sausage factory. The level of social responsibility is very low. Then, this is possible because of the complacency that some editors, who think that there is no alternative. But if we think that two different newspapers can publish the exact same article except for a tiny change of words in the headline, then one day we may start thinking that journalists aren’t needed anymore. If we accept this now, then we may start accepting many other things in the near future. And that leads me to my last point, which is the journalists. Considering the lack of job security in journalism and the high unemployment figures in the media, not a lot of people can walk out the door from a newspaper where they don’t enjoy working. And this has numbed a lot of media workers. The things that outraged us 20 years, 10 years, five years ago, seem normal to us, now.
Index: You often say that the less employed journalists there are, the more endangered democracy is. How so?
Rodrigues: If we have fewer people in our newsrooms, then we have fewer people to cover many topics that are important to our society. And those who still are in the newsrooms don’t have much time to do their job, because while there are fewer people in newsrooms, there is more work to do compare to a few years ago when there wasn’t cable television news channels or the internet. A journalist needs time to investigate phenomena and subjects that are surreptitious. So this leads to the impoverishment of a fundamental tool for the rule of law. Newsrooms have fewer eyes, fewer hands and less thinking heads which can reflect on our times.
Index: Do you believe that the state of affairs in media businesses also affects press freedom?
Rodrigues: Yes, in the sense that the work of journalists has a smaller margin. We are just like everybody else, we have bills to pay and children to raise. And when you live in an environment where there are mass layoffs or where journalists are compelled into leaving their jobs through contractual agreements, it’s obvious that the exercise of the amount of freedom every media worker must have can be compromised. I can tell you that the current environment does not favour press freedom. It takes us to situations where journalists apply self-censorship in a way that they don’t go as far as they should to contest editorial options made by those above them. Apart from that, the pressure to publish something or to do otherwise is not a new thing. But what we have now is an environment which can augment that.
Rodrigues: The Union of Journalists have already stated that cutting an article short before it’s even written or published is an attack on press freedom that should be fought against and denounced. This prohibition by default makes absolutely no sense. But having said that, the act of a journalist becoming an assistant to a case with the sole purpose of writing about is something that doesn’t dignify journalism. But it’s still very clear that there is still no reason for a court to prohibit the press from publishing something that hasn’t even seen the light of day yet.
Rodrigues: It’s worrisome in many ways. It’s clear that there’s a certain mentality that makes no differentiation between running a media company, which means you have a higher degree of social responsibility to fulfil, and any other type of company. That’s a problem. Another problem is when one invests in a newspaper and at the same time behaves in a manner that is not friendly to the values of freedom. But I have to stress that this is not exclusive to those cases [of Angolan investors]. It’s important to understand that the concentration of media ownership is a worrisome reality which has been growing lately.
Index: Do you think it’s time for the government to begin a state subsidy that goes into financing newspapers, news channels or news radio stations?
Rodrigues: I think this shouldn’t be a taboo. It should be put on the table alongside other options. What I can tell you is that RTP and RDP (public television and radio) are financed with public money and I don’t think that anyone can honestly say that they’re more favourable to the government than the other media outlets. Besides, if you watch a Portuguese movie or go to the theatre, those productions will most likely have public funds, and that doesn’t mean that they’re acting nice towards the government. The ghost of the government’s involvement in journalism is something that should be discussed. We have to be honest about it. Why should we regard private investment as bona fide and think otherwise when it comes to public funding. This is something that we have to talk about. We can’t afford not to do that.
This article was originally posted at Index on Censorship
Freedom of the press has always been a pretty reliable litmus test for the state of any democracy. However, as Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project shows, countries that are seen as traditionally open, with constitutions protecting freedom of expression, are currently rife with violations against the media.
“It is extremely troubling that media workers have been physically and sexually assaulted, arrested and denied access to key reporting areas in countries with strong democratic institutions,” Hannah Machlin, Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project officer, said. “We hope governments take action to prevent these types of violations from occurring at such a frightening rate.”
So far this year, Mapping Media Freedom has verified 61 media violations. Here are just five examples from the last fortnight that highlight some of the failures of these democracies to live up to their own standards.
1. Germany: Belgian TV reporter assaulted live on air
Just weeks after hundreds of women were sexually assaulted on the streets of Cologne, a journalist, Esmeralda Labye, was sexually assaulted while reporting from the Cologne carnival for Belgian TV station RTBF on 4 February. One man grabbed her breast and another kissed her neck while she was live on air.
“Two or three men gathered behind me and attempted to make themselves the centre of my attention,” Labye told The Guardian. “I was focusing on the broadcast, and then I felt a kiss on my neck.”
Writing for RTBF online, Labye condemned the “wretched and cowardly men” who assaulted her and complained of the increasing difficulty for female journalists to do their job without being harassed.
2. France: Proposed law will increase role of government’s media watchdog
On 4 February, plans to increase the role of the CSA — the French broadcast watchdog whose members are chosen by the government — as a guarantor of the independence of the media were discussed in the French National Assembly.
The French journalists’ union SNJ criticized the planned bill, written by a Parti Socialiste MP, stressing that the CSA is not independent from political influence. They wrote: “The CSA has no responsibility and legitimacy on matters related to the control of information or journalists. It should have none!”
3. Greece: Violent attack against journalist during anti-austerity demonstration
Protests against the Greek government’s plan to change its pension policy as part of the country’s third international bailout brought an estimated 40,000 people onto the streets of Athens and other cities, including journalists. On 4 February, Dimitris Perros, a journalist from the local radio station Athens 9,84, was violently attacked by unknown assailants while covering the demonstration. He was transported to the hospital with major injuries.
Newspapers reported that the attack was denounced in statements from across the political spectrum including Syriza,PASOK and the Greek Communist Party and the Journalist’s Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers. “The strangers who approached him asked him first if he is a journalist and when he answered affirmatively they started beating him with planks, while the police looked on,” the union stressed in an announcement.
4. The Netherlands: Journalists denied access to meeting on housing asylum seekers under “extremist” ban
On 28 January, several journalists were denied access to a citizens’ meeting about the possible creation of a new asylum seeker centre in the village of Luttelgeest, according to newspaper reports. An emergency regulation was issued to refuse journalists access to the meeting. The mayor also banned journalists from travelling within a radius of five kilometres of the village.
The Dutch Association of Journalists, the NVJ, condemned the measure saying that it was not the first time journalists have been banned. “It has happened many times now,” NVJ secretary Thomas Bruning said. “If journalists are denied access, they are obstructed from doing their job. This is alarming and should not happen in a democracy.”
5. Poland: Government uses defamation law to stop media critics
Even Europe’s youngest democracies are fighting off attacks on media freedom.
As Index on Censorship has previously reported, there is a growing trend in Poland of the government using defamation actions to stop criticism in the media. The most recent example, on 3 February, saw Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, PiS, file a libel suit against the largest daily newspaper in the country, Gazeta Wyborcza about an opinion piece it disliked.
The article argued that PiS and Poland’s president Andrej Duda have behaved like a “mafia state” for pardoning former anti-corruption official Mariusz Kaminski, for abuse of power. Duda issued the pardon before Kaminski had exhausted the appeals process, a point that the author of the piece, Wojciech Czuchnowski, criticised in his opinion piece.
Hungary’s media outlets are coming under increasing pressure from lawsuits, restrictions on what they can publish and high fees for freedom of information requests, according to a survey of the 15 verified reports to Index on Censorship’s media monitoring project during the fourth quarter of 2015.
The Mapping Media Freedom project, which identifies threats, violations and limitations faced by members of the press throughout the European Union, candidate states and neighbouring countries, has recorded 129 verified incidents in Hungary since May 2014. In the fourth quarter of 2015 the country had the second-highest total of verified reports among EU member states and the sixth highest total among the 38 countries monitored by Mapping Media Freedom.
In 2015, Hungary was ranked #65 (partially free) on the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. Only two EU member states, Greece and Bulgaria received a worse score.
In autumn 2015, the law governing freedom of information (FOI) was amended after a series of investigative reports uncovered wasteful government spending through FOI requests. Under the changes, the Hungarian government was granted sweeping new powers to withhold information and allowed the government and other public authorities to charge a fee for the “labour costs” associated with FOI queries. Critics warned that fees would prevent public interest journalism, and, in at least one case, it appears they were right.
In other cases, journalists have been sued for slander and issued court orders for undercover reporting on the refugee crisis.
Here are the 15 reports with links to more information.
The Budapest Chamber of Commerce (BCCI) asked for 3-5 million HUF ($10,356-16,352) to answer a freedom of information (FOI) request submitted by channel RTL Klub. The Budapest Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that the price will cover the salaries of 2-3 employees who would be given the task to respond to the FOI regarding BCCI’s spending and finances.
Those fired included journalists, editors and foreign correspondents. According to the MTVA, the reason for the dismissal was the “better exploitation of synergies”, “increase of efficiency” and “cost reduction”.
András Jámbor, a blogger is suspect in a slander case because he refuted the claims of Máté Kocsis, the mayor of Józsefváros (8th district of Budapest). In August 2015, Mayor Kocsis published a Facebook post alleging that the refugees have been making fires, littering, going on rampage, stealing and stabbing people in parks.
In response, Jámbor wrote a post for Kettős Mérce blog, disproving the mayor’s claims. He added that “Máté Kocsis is guilty of instigation and scare-mongering”. The mayor denounced him for slander.
On 3 December 2015, Jámbor confirmed to police that he is the author of the blog post and sustains the affirmations he made. The police took fingerprints and mugshots of the journalist.
Gergely Nyilas, a journalist working for Hungarian online daily Index.hu, was summoned to court for his undercover report on refugee camp conditions published in August 2015.
The journalist reentered Hungary’s borders with a group of asylum seekers and, upon being detained, told the border guards that he was from Kyrgyzstan. Dressed in disguise, Nyilas reported on his treatment by border guards, the conditions at the Röszke camp, a bus ride and his experience at the police station in Győr. He eventually admitted he was Hungarian, at which point the police let him go, the Budapest Beacon reported.
Based on a police investigation, prosecutors first charged Nyilas with lying to law enforcement officials and forging official documents. The charges were then dropped but prosecutors still issued a legal reprimand against the journalist.
On 20 November 2015, László Kövér, the speaker of the parliament has banned RTL Klub television from entering the parliament building, saying that the crew broke parliament rules on press coverage. According to Kövér, the journalists were filming in a corridor, where filming was forbidden, and then refused to leave the premises after they were repeatedly asked to.
The day before, on 19 November, RTL Klub was not allowed to participate at a press conference held by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and NATO secretary general Jens Soltenberg in parliament.
RTL Klub, along with other Hungarian media outlets such as 444.hu or hvg.hu, were not invited to the press conference, but RTL Klub journalists still showed up. They attempted to enter the room with the camera rolling but were denied access. This incident reportedly led to the ban on their access.
RTL Klub TV, 444.hu and hvg.hu journalists were not invited to a joint press conference held in parliament by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and NATO secretary general Jens Soltenberg.
RTL Klub journalists still attempted to attend by entering the room with a camera already rolling but were still barred from entering.
They were told that the meeting was “private”, and journalists were not allowed to ask questions. Bertalan Havasi, the press secretary for the Hungarian prime minister, told them that their pass was only for the plenary session and that they must leave. However, state media outlets like M1 were allowed live transmission of the press conference, and MTI, the Hungarian wire service also published a piece about the meeting.
Publicly funded news agency MTI refused to publish a press release by Hungarian Socialist Party vice president Zoltán Lukács, where he asked for a wealth gain investigation into István Tiborcz, the son-in-law of the Hungarian prime minister. MTI refused to publish the press release, claiming that István Tiborcz is not a public figure.
The business interests of the son-in-law of Prime Minister Victor Orbán are widely discussed in the Hungarian media, especially because companies connected to Tiborcz are frequently winning public procurement tenders.
The article titled, A Mass of People Saluted Viktor Orbán at Nyíregyháza – Or Not?, had a photo showing that only two dozen people gathered around the Hungarian prime minister visiting the city of Nyíregyháza. Soon after the piece was published, it was removed from the szon.hu website. However, it was reportedly still available temporarily in Google cache.
The article was a reaction to a photo published by the state news agency, MTI, that was shot in such a way that it leaves the impression that there was a big crowd around the prime minister.
A technician working for Hír TV news television was assaulted at a meeting of the National Roma Council held in the city of Mohács. The technician was standing near a door, when the daughter of a member of the National Roma Council, hit him in the stomach, as she was leaving the room.
The mother of the aggressor, Jánosné Kis denied any wrongdoing, although her daughter actions were captured on film.
The Hungarian publishers’ association claimed that if the draft proposal by the interior ministry is passed by parliament, it could “harshly interfere with and damage” media freedom, and would facilitate censorship. The association represents over 40 of Hungary’s largest media companies.
Geza Szocs, the cultural commissioner in the Hungarian Prime Ministry, has asked for a modification of Hungary’s media law that would criminalise defamation, in an article for mandiner.hu. Szocs has also asked for a stricter regulation of damages caused by defamatory articles.
The commissioner wrote the piece in response to a series of articles published by index.hu, which criticised the Hungary’s presence at the 2015 Milan World Fair, a project that Szocs was managing.
“Don’t take pictures of the state secretary while he is eating,” a staff member told the journalist, who works for vs.hu.
The journalist briefly interviewed Tállai, who is also head of the Hungarian Tax Authority, in the township of Mezőkövesd, where the politician started the conversation by asking, “Why do you want to write a negative article about me?”. Tállai then smiled and asked the journalist, “You are registered at the Tax Authority, right?”
Editors at MR I Kossuth Rádió, part of Hungarian public radio, did not broadcast an interview with János M. Rainer, one of the most acclaimed historians on the 1956 Hungarian revolution.
“We don’t need a Nagy Imre-Rainer narrative!” was the justification given by one of the editors to censor the content, the reporter who interviewed Rainer claimed.
Hungarian state news agency MTI refused to publish a press release issued by Lehet Más a Politika (LMP), an opposition parliamentary party.
In the press release, LMP criticised MTI by stating the Hungarian government is spending more money every year on the news agency, yet MTI fails to meet the standards of impartiality and is being transformed into a government propaganda machine.
Hungarian journalists were not allowed to ask questions at a press conference held after a meeting between the Hungarian president János Áder and the PM of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.
Only international journalists from Reuters and the Croatian state television were allowed to ask the politicians questions.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. Credit: Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com
Since October 2015, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project has recorded a total of 40 verified violations against press freedom in Ukraine, six of which took place in Crimea. Of these reports, 17 included a physical assault or an attack to property, showing just how unsafe the country is for many media workers. To break this number down further, seven violations were physical attacks on journalists only, six were solely damage to journalists’ property and four included a mix of both.
“State and non-state actors alike are undermining the freedom of the press in Ukraine, including Crimea,” Hannah Machlin, Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project officer, said. “Clashes in the eastern region of the country, along with blocked access to local government meetings, frequently incite threats against media workers, including arrest, harassment, violence and even death, all of which set a disturbing precedent for the country as a whole.”
The media in Ukraine may be protected in theory by laws that allow access to information and the increased independence of the broadcasting regulator, but as Mapping Media Freedom shows, this isn’t so much the case in practice.
Below, Index on Censorship details just 10 of the verified incidents since October 2015, highlighting the problem of violence — from the police and politicians to far-right extremists and unidentified assailants — and damage to property against media workers in Ukraine.
Source: Mapping Media Freedom, Index on Censorship’s joint project with European Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders to monitor censorship and violence against journalists in Europe.
