The chairman of Lusa’s board of directors said today that the Portuguese state “has little involvement” in media companies, stressing that the news agency is “one of the main vehicles for public policy”.
“We think that Lusa is like the air, it’s there and nobody talks about it. Lusa has been talked about more from November last year until now than probably in recent years and that’s a good thing. In reality, what is happening is that the media, private or commercial, has no capacity, no sustainability,” said Joaquim Carreira.
The president of Lusa was speaking at a seminar on “The challenges of the press and the Portuguese-speaking market”, organized by the Portuguese Press Association (APImprensa), at the Fado Museum in Lisbon, where Lusa signed a content transfer protocol with the entity that represents 255 titles, from 174 members.
According to Joaquim Carreira, citing data from the Regulatory Authority for the Media (ERC), 4% of media companies have 88% of sales in Portugal, 83% of profits, indicating that the agency has more than 500 clients with “very small contracts”.
“Lusa depends on the state for 14.7 million euros, because the state had to intervene more last year, otherwise it would have had a problem with workers due to inflation. I couldn’t really expect the private sector to be compensated for this amount. We’re talking about around 700,000 euros in one year. This had a big impact, an impact that you felt. There was a strike. We had four days of strike action, it was that part of the day when there was total silence, when there was no news falling,” he stressed.
Joaquim Carreira noted that the average amount of state intervention, taking RTP and Lusa into account, is 26 euros per person.
“The state in Portugal is not very interventionist (…) I don’t know if you know, for example, how much it is in Finland or Sweden. We’re talking about amounts of more than 120 euros [per person]. And that’s not why they don’t have democracy, it’s not why state intervention is harmful. What’s important to reflect on here is the link between the executive and supervisory sides. Lusa doesn’t have that and should have it for the future,” he stressed.
The Program of the XXIV Constitutional Government foresees maintaining the state’s majority position in the Lusa agency, as well as “resolving the impasse in its shareholder structure”.
In the document delivered to the Assembly of the Republic on April 10, the government program led by Luís Montenegro says it intends to “maintain the state’s majority position in Agência Lusa, contributing to a public information service of rigor, seriousness and quality”.
The government also intends to “clarify the situation of the Lusa agency and resolve the impasse in its shareholder structure in a balanced, impartial way, involving all agents in the sector”.
Lusa is 50.15% controlled by the Portuguese state, with Global Media holding 23.36% and Páginas Civilizadas 22.35%.
The previous government, headed by António Costa, intended to go ahead with the purchase of these stakes from Global Media and Páginas Civilizadas, but the deal ended up failing.
