Ética Periodística a Principios del Siglo XXI - Monitorando

Therefore, assessments were made in the sense that the TVI's administration
illegally interfered with the competences of the Director of Information, despite his
possibility of disobeying the order to cease the Jornal Nacional de Sexta, since it came
from someone without expertise in editorial matters (ERC, 2009: p. 18). Moreover, it is
also added that this was an act against the law and it was an intervention that could
possibly be an intervention affecting the functions and powers of the Directorate of
Information, as well as the rights of other journalists (idem: 1). In this context, it is
noteworthy that here are involved values protected by the Constitution, namely freedom
of press and freedom of enterprise. This will be the first point to deal with more
carefully.
Regarding the regulatory activity in a narrow sense (self-regulation), note the
observation of the members of ERC’s Regulatory Council:
Despite the obvious virtues of the Newsroom Councils - recognized by
the TVI’s Administration in its pronunciation -, the truth is that this
representative body of journalists does not exist in TVI’s Newsroom. This makes
it harder for the journalists to exercise their rights, retrains their ability to
intervene in the editorial orientation of the network informative services and
impoverishes the internal pluralism (idem: p. 16).
However, based on this assessment, observe that it is an external organism and
the major regulator the one that remembers the strength of self-regulation, a type of the
kind regulation which involves a collective organization that establishes and enforces
certain rules on its members and some discipline (MOREIRA, 1997 cit. in FIDALGO,
J., 2009: p. 362).
We should not, however, confuse it with ethics and deontology 61 related to the
profession of journalist as far as they are directed to morality and set of principles and
values that should guide the activity of information professionals (FIDALGO, J., 2009:
p. 365). The third section of this paper is addressed to the Newsroom Councils’ legal
framework and the consequences of their nonexistence in this case. To close up, we
draw some general considerations about the act of regulating itself.
61 Although we recognize that literature uses the term “media ethics” for ethics and deontology, we prefer to
distinguish both concepts. We use ethics to refer to the individual concerns for ethics and deontology as the moral
core of values and principles connected to the profession.
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