By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, May 3 2007 (IPS)

Only a small proportion of the 235 million people who live in the eight Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) countries scattered over four continents enjoy access to a truly free press.

This year’s Freedom House (FH) survey report, issued in advance of World Press Freedom Day, May 3, has positive things to say only about Cape Verde, Portugal and Sao Tomé and Príncipe, which have a combined population of 11.5 million, or just under 4.1 percent of the total population of the Lusophone countries.

At the bottom of the list of eight countries is Angola, where press freedom does not exist, “despite constitutional guarantees,” the report says.

Angola, population 14 million, is 135th in the ranking of 195 countries published by FH. “Freedom of the press is restricted,” and although the new press law passed in 2006 “is an improvement over previous legislation…(it) includes several restrictive provisions,” says FH.

The other 209.5 million people living in the Portuguese-speaking nations have access to only partial press freedom, according to the Washington-based FH, which claims to be independent although it receives U.S. government funding.

FH is a founder member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a network made up of 71 non-governmental organisations worldwide.

FH classifies all of these countries as having “partial” press freedom.

Portugal, population 10.5 million, shared 12th place with Liechtenstein and Palau, beating Germany, Ireland and the United States, which jointly occupied the 16th place. The “champions” of press freedom were Finland and Iceland, sharing first place.

Country rankings were determined on the basis of “the legal environment in which media operate; political influences on reporting and access to information; and economic pressures on contents and the dissemination of news.”

Portugal owes its strong position to the absence of formal censorship, analyst Augusto Vilela told IPS. Instead, as in the rest of the so-called “free world,” reporters carry out self-censorship, and are subject to the conditions imposed by directors and editors of media outlets.

“In Portugal, the press, television and radio stations are managed by people who act as ‘foremen’ for the owners of the media, and impose their (the owners’) ideas,” he said.

These either follow a particular ideological line, or else the aim is “to sell the ‘product’, in a world where the vast majority of journalists no longer write for ‘public opinion’, but for ‘consumers’ of news articles, which are usually brief, scandalous or banal,” Vilela said.

Carlos Narciso, a popular television presenter and newscaster, agreed with Vilela’s views. Last week he said that in Portuguese journalism, “when the owner issues an order, the director obeys, and activates a chain of command at the end of which there is always a reporter who does the work.”

Cape Verde, population 600,000, and Sao Tomé and Príncipe, with just 170,000 people, were both ranked 61st, joining a select group of African countries which FH considers to have a free press. The others in this group are Ghana, Mauritius, South Africa, Benin, Botswana, Mali, Namibia, Lesotho and Senegal.

Last November, FH’s report on Freedom in the World, a more general look at overall freedoms, said Cape Verde was “the freest country in Africa.” However, in early 2006 FH had placed Cape Verde among countries with only “partial” freedom of the press.

Its ascent in the ranking was due “to the continued consolidation of democratic trends leading to greater opening in the media environment and a decrease in the number of cases of legal harassment of, and attacks on, journalists,” according to FH.

In Angola, on the other hand, “although the government generally tolerates criticism from private media, government officials often pressure independent media to cover the government in a more favourable light,” the report says, going on to deplore the fact that “arbitrary detention, harassment, and attacks on journalists continued to take place.”

Journalists Paulo Mateta, deputy secretary general of the Angolan Journalists Union (UJA), Luisa Rogério, secretary general of the Journalists Trade Union (SJA), and Maurício Camuto, executive director of the private Catholic radio station Ecclesia, disagreed with the report’s assessment.

They were quoted in the on-line journal Notícias Lusófonas on Tuesday as agreeing that “the plurality of social communication outlets and access to diverse sources of information are signs that the right to freedom of the press is exercised in practice in Angola.”

Camuto said that “important steps have been taken towards consolidating freedom of expression, as a result of greater demand by citizens in the present peaceful state of the country,” which on Apr. 4 celebrated the fifth anniversary of the ceasefire that put an end to a 27-year civil war.

Mateta said the existence of public and private media outlets, the absence of censorship, and “the contribution of journalists to strengthening democracy and improvements in governance” were “satisfactory indicators.”

Rogério said that there had been no reports in 2006 of flagrant abuses of press freedom, such as imprisonment or acts of violence against journalists, which he described as “proof of a change in mentality in relation to the work of the media.”

“That is false, or at least partly false. The fact that there were no reports or accusations does not mean very much,” rebutted journalist Orlando Castro in an opinion column, also in Notícias Lusófonas.

Castro wondered what had induced these three respected Angolan journalists, “who were the first to defend what they thought was the whole truth, to mention only half the truth now,” and he pointed out that there was a substantial difference in Angola between what was enshrined “de jure” and what happened “de facto.”

To include the Angolan state press among media outlets which enjoy freedom of information “is like putting a disabled person on a football team. He may know all there is to know about football, but he can’t play,” Castro said.

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