Sentimentos Contraditórios: Quanto os Jornalistas Gostam da Intervenção dos Públicos?

“Não Tenho as Condições”: Como os Jornalistas de Televisão e Rádio Avaliam a Qualidade do Jornalismo em Portugal

“…"Journalism is increasingly a precarious profession and this affects the quality of the journalism that a person does" (Journalist 7). These testimonies are not surprising, partly because they are represented, albeit through the prism of press freedom rather than quality, in Lopes (2015), and partly because they are, in fact, concerns that run through the history of journalism in Portugal, as was seen above in Correia (1997). In this case, however, the association between the quality of journalistic work and job insecurity is directly made by the interviewees.…”

“…In another case, the pressure from the competition and the need not to fall behind other channels or radio stations were emphasised. The pressures of time and competition (which are, after all, interlinked in the need to be there first and get "the scoop") may have already been present in the 1990s, as Correia (1997) wrote, but they have worsened with digitalisation and are highlighted in more contemporary literature on the quality of journalism, such as among those interviewed by Jenkins and Nielsen (2020). In six cases, journalists spoke of the obstacle to journalistic quality, that is, the precariousness of the profession.…”

“…The composition of the journalistic profession in Portugal continued to evolve until the end of the 20th century: while in 1974 there were 700 registered journalists, in 1996 there were 4,300, according to Fernando Correia (1997), who clearly attributes this increase to "the diversification and growth of the media (specialised magazines, new radio and TV stations)" (p. 42). During the 1980s and 1990s, the profession was not only revitalised, but also feminised, and efforts to increase education also bore fruit -in 1992, 35% of journalists had studied social communication (Correia, 1997).…”

“…Inseparable from the evolution of journalists' sociological profile was the progress in their labour situation -Paquete de Oliveira pointed out back in 1994 that the average journalist's salary was "clearly lower than the average salaries earned by professionals in well-established professions such as doctors and lawyers" (Garcia & Oliveira, 1994, p. 37). Correia (1997) even wrote that the fact that journalists were not self-employed, but employees, made them more vulnerable as professionals, for example, in the case of precarious or poorly paid labour contracts, which interfered in both their personal and professional lives, and also in their freedom to follow the deontology and principles of professional ethics that should govern them. Therefore, they had less power to resist corporate or managerial pressures.…”