[ad_1]
by Mário Crespo
First act
A specter haunts democracy in Portugal: the specter of self-censorship in journalism.
The dangerous argument that fans of good journalistic practices are propagating where they speak of ‘illegal dissemination’ of news and ‘not MMA’, heralds more than a drift towards official control of information. In fact, what has happened in recent days tells us that political power already dominates much of what we see, hear and read today and that it is trying to steer public opinion in the directions it believes are favorable to it.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, António Costa’s seven-second diatribe against the doctors describe it better than anything that can be written about the man who rules Portugal.
When the prime minister speaks of “doctors” as “cowardly dudes”, he issues a crucial statement to put his attitude in the context of addressing the multiple public health problems of the pandemic country. The group of journalists who interviewed him should have immediately asked him for a comment on the rationale for such violent destruction. They could never ignore it, as the editorial team at Expresso tried to do.
It should be noted that there was no case of “off-the-record”. In addition, it compromises the journalistic performance, the lack of perception that the Portuguese journalistic class (if there is one) is showing about the concept. The “off-the-record” is the understanding between reporters and the news where the only ethical commitment possible is to safeguard the anonymity of the source. You can never be trusted to delete content at the convenience of your respondents. The dissemination of news is a journalistic obligation. Without the inconvenient disclosure of news content, there would have been no knowledge of the Watergate scandal, the Casa Pia outrages, the BPN theft, or the irregularities in Socrates’ accounts. In fact, without the dissemination of the content obtained by journalistic work, there is no democracy. Not revealing what Costa said about the doctors would be an act of censorship.
An interview situation (especially at the prime minister’s official residence) is the most formal act of information gathering that can be found in a democracy. Everything said is in the public domain. Journalists cannot behave here as confidants of the humor of a rude interviewee, as was the case with the Expresso team judging by the friendly interview they conducted, which was only serious news in the part they did not want to divulge.
When António Costa, four years ago, due to an inconsequential slip of language, expelled João Soares from his office, he justified himself by calling the media and saying: «(…) I reminded the members of the Government that, as members of the Government, nor at the breakfast table can they forget that they are members of the Government and, therefore, they must be contained in the way they express their emotions. Later in this same statement, which was the equivalent of the stab in the back that he gave him during a fraternal embrace with which Macbeth murders his friend Banquo, António Costa would refer to prudence and common sense that one must have «( …) in these communication spaces. which today are neither private nor reserved, naturally become public ». Prudence and common sense that he lacked in this contact with journalists where he certainly did not behave like the most important member of the Government. But anyway, Costa probably said those things because he was so comfortable with the Expresso reporters. This is how the interview denotes it, especially in the angry and abrupt way in which Costa described to his venerable, grateful, scared and passive interviewers his absurdly restrictive understanding of the attributions of the Ordem dos Médicos: «(…) Orders do not exist to inspect the state! Point! ”) And they stayed. And they changed the subject.
Second act
António Costa is today Prime Minister of a strange cabinet made up of people who have cursed Portuguese public life since José Sócrates. People who served the ‘ferocious animal’ harshly during Freeport. That they walked with Soares, Guterres and Sampaio in Casa Pia and, by the way, people who bought half a dozen Kamovs that do not fly while the country burns. And he is also a man with a strange nerve and stone. I witnessed it on May 27, 2014 when a discreet monument to María José Nogueira Pinto was inaugurated in Ribeira das Naus.
António Costa was mayor of Lisbon. He gave a beautiful speech extolling the figure of María José and her influential role in Portuguese life. Jaime Nogueira Pinto closed the ceremony with words of longing that moved everyone and left us in the uncomfortable silence of memories that really hurt. In this atmosphere of gloomy collective silence, António Costa folded the two A4 sheets of his funeral eulogy, put them in the pocket of a wide light gray alpaca cape, made up his tie, shook hands with two or three of those present, walked away. he stood about thirty feet from the monument and waved at the three television cameras covering the opening rushing toward him as journalists-in-training, in the usual media frenzy, offered him eager microphones.
About five minutes would have passed since António Costa, the mayor of Lisbon, had delivered a tearful and tearful eulogy to an exceptional person when, with his back to the monument to María José Nogueira Pinto, he announced that he was going to run for the leadership of the Socialist Party. rejecting a violent litany against the Secretariat of António José Seguro. It was already known that Costa was planning this affront, but it was not known when he would take public action. He chose the day of the funeral eulogy to María José Nogueira Pinto.
Seeing this, the words of Miguel Torga came to mind in a comment he made after meeting a prominent socialist who at one point took the leadership of the PS and who would finally achieve glory in excelsis at the height of public life , urbi et orbi: “The boy speaks well, but he sucks.” Namely: the account of this conversation that took place in the office of Dr. Adolfo Correia da Rocha in Coimbra was made ‘off the record’.
