Journalists want investors to be required to register their suitability

Journalists meeting at the congress this Sunday endorsed proposals that would require media investors to be in good standing and journalists to receive dividends from the major platforms that use their work.

Following the results of the V Congress of Journalists, which ended this Sunday in Lisbon, more than 20 proposals were voted on, one of which, proposed by the Union of Journalists (SJ), requires that any natural or legal person who decides to enter the field of media must “submit to the register suitability on pain of making the recording impossible.”

The issue of media ownership has become much discussed in connection with the entry into Global Media (owner of JN, DN and TSF, among others) of the investment fund World Opportunity Fund (based in the Bahamas, a so-called “tax haven”). ). At the moment, workers have wage arrears and there is a threat of dismissal of 200 people.

Another approved SJ proposal calls for “journalists to claim the dividends that major digital platforms receive from journalism” and for the union to lead the fight.

The topic of large digital platforms usurping the work of journalists is one of the most discussed in the class, and another of the voted proposals rejects “the vulture of journalistic work by social networks controlled by transnational platforms that do not pay for it as due and often distort and manipulate it in your own interests.”

Journalists also supported the proposal that, as a rule, persons who have committed crimes or become victims of crimes should not be disclosed, given that the identification of accused and convicted persons harms their resocialization, and the identification of victims of crimes against their will violates human rights. intimacy.

Petitions against attacks on journalists were also approved. One proposal calls for a swift investigation into the attack on an Expresso journalist last week at an event at the Catholic University with the Chegi leader. Other proposals reject the arrests and killings of journalists, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Proposals for greater diversity in newsrooms and newsrooms (mostly male, white and heterosexual), as well as strengthening photojournalism and the status of photojournalists, were also approved.

The Fifth Congress of Journalists took place from Thursday to Sunday in Lisbon (São Jorge Cinema) and attracted almost 800 delegates.

According to the Commission for Professional Cards of Journalists, there are 5,313 journalists in the country, of which 3,110 are men and 2,203 are women.