{"title":"Transparency in Portuguese media: from the buzzword to the unsolved regulatory challenge","authors":"Carla Filipe Baptista","doi":"10.15847/obsobs16220221952","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Transparency is a long-discussed term in journalism. It has been conceptualized as an evolving professional value, a political issue, and a regulatory challenge. In the disinformed digital age, became a rescue criterion to rebuild a credible relationship with the public based on trustworthiness. Transparency urges for holistic approaches, due to its inherent instability and variability across media systems; political, economic, and regulatory frameworks; and editorial cultures. This article analyses media transparency from a local perspective, departing from the launching of the Platform of Transparency by the Portuguese Media Authority (ERC). The Portuguese case stands in a European space deprived of international standards to assess media transparency, even if the concept is broadly discursively constructed as a key element of media pluralism. An increasingly fragmented media landscape degrades ethical standards based on shared values and favors the des activation of transparency as a disruptive transforming professional practice. The benevolent Portuguese initiative may provide political legitimacy to a narrowed version of media transparency, confined to issues of accountability and assumptions of political independence. Will the prevailing “fortress newsroom” (Smith, 2005; Meier 2009) survive to a transparent account department?","PeriodicalId":149155,"journal":{"name":"Observatorio (OBS*)","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Observatorio (OBS*)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.15847/obsobs16220221952","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Transparency is a long-discussed term in journalism. It has been conceptualized as an evolving professional value, a political issue, and a regulatory challenge. In the disinformed digital age, became a rescue criterion to rebuild a credible relationship with the public based on trustworthiness. Transparency urges for holistic approaches, due to its inherent instability and variability across media systems; political, economic, and regulatory frameworks; and editorial cultures. This article analyses media transparency from a local perspective, departing from the launching of the Platform of Transparency by the Portuguese Media Authority (ERC). The Portuguese case stands in a European space deprived of international standards to assess media transparency, even if the concept is broadly discursively constructed as a key element of media pluralism. An increasingly fragmented media landscape degrades ethical standards based on shared values and favors the des activation of transparency as a disruptive transforming professional practice. The benevolent Portuguese initiative may provide political legitimacy to a narrowed version of media transparency, confined to issues of accountability and assumptions of political independence. Will the prevailing “fortress newsroom” (Smith, 2005; Meier 2009) survive to a transparent account department?