Ética Periodística a Principios del Siglo XXI - Monitorando

Problematic are also issues of social responsibility inherent to journalistic
profession and the public visibility of their activity, whose fate will not be the physical
death but may be the abyss of a professional death (CÉSAR, O., 2009), as the President
of the Journalists Syndicate’s Council of Ethics, Orlando César, predicted in a speech
dated April 2009 62 . This is a more or less catastrophic idea that can be used to
contextualize professional risks of who insists giving bothering news. In fact, the
journalist and former-news presenter Manuela Moura Guedes has long been accused
(even by public figures) of maximizing confusion by mixing facts and opinions and
doing a bad journalism, whose ethical rules does not know 63 .
This is the background that underpins the opening of an investigation of alleged
political and economic interference in the broadcaster’s performance. There is also an
enquiry regarding the weekly newspaper called “Sol” of alleged pressures for not
publishing news about the Freeport case (for supposedly being against the government
led by José Sócrates). This discussion also took place in the Portuguese Parliament and
ERC’s leaders were heard on December 22, 2009 at the 13th Commission on Ethics,
Society and Culture, coordinated by Bacelar Gouveia.
In this wrap up of external and internal tensions is press freedom, which cannot
exclude responsibility. FIDALGO, J. (2009) argues that efforts focus mainly on a
juridical side, formality and institutionalization of the profession rather than on the
activity itself, on work actually done. In a period of crisis, where labor relations and
precariousness are not regulated, the weakening of the associative organization of
journalists in newsrooms and loss of memory references for those who start in
journalism, isn’t journalism itself being affected?
ORLANDO CÉSAR (2009) refers that internal and external pressures to which
journalists are now exposed are equally or more decisive the more precarious is their
situation. So, it seems that news is often resigned to the lack of verification of the facts,
assumes strokes of sensationalism, invades privacy and is subjected to statements’
registration without critical review:
News is accommodated without ethical and deontological ability to evade
from several vests of power which transfigure it. Whether for business interests,
62 Speech available online at http://www.jornalistas.eu/noticia.asp?id=7281&idselect=365&idCanal=365&p=0
[accessed 20/01/2010].
63 Such accusations came from António Marinho Pinto, chairman of Portuguese Lawyers’ Union, during an
interview conducted by this journalist, broadcasted on May 22, 2009 on TVI.
315