Lusa's Writing Board criticizes lack of frontality of administration

Othe elected members of the Board of Writing (CR) of Lusa accused the Board of Directors (CA) of the agency of lack of frontality before the parliamentary hearing of the outgoing Directorate of Information, pointing out omissions on contracts and editorial interference.

In a communiqué also signed by the Workers' Commission, the Union of Journalists (SJ) and the Union of Workers of the Services Sector (SITESE) and SITE, the CoR criticized the work of administrators Luís Ferreira Lopes, Ana Alves and Joaquim Carreira before the hearing of the outgoing DI, in particular the testimony of former director Luísa Meireles, on Thursday at the Committee on Culture, Communication, Youth and Sport.

According to the CoR, CA remained unaware of the issues raised about alleged irregularities in the contracts of international correspondents and did not clarify the doubts regarding the hiring of a journalist to Brussels, which the Workers' Representative Bodies (WTOs) consider an attempt to interfere in the editorial sphere.

The employees' representatives state that the question of hiring was detailed during the hearing, with reference to the correspondence exchanged between DI and CA, but they maintain that the administrators did not recognize the error that, from their perspective, caused a conflict of editorial independence.

At the parliamentary hearing, Luísa Meireles said she received an email indicating that “CA had decided to hire journalist X [to Brussels], so it was available to receive a DI proposal for the hiring of this journalist.”.

Luisa Meireles added that the journalist in question is a friend of one of the administrators and had been her colleague at the previous job, a circumstance that, she said, “put it a little uncomfortable, even for the general writing”.

In the statement, elected CoR members also consider that CA tried to minimise the impact of the situation on the agency’s social peace climate in Parliament.

Workers' representatives recall that the last plenary unanimously approved a vote of repudiation against CA and argue that strategic initiatives related to ‘podcasts’, photographic exhibitions or conferences on business models do not respond to fundamental questions about editorial autonomy and the removal of a DI.

The CoR also announced that it will ask the Committee on the Professional Journalist Wallet (CCPJ) for an opinion on the new draft travel agreement sent by the administration.

According to the press release, CA justified the amendments to the minutes in the light of earlier versions with the need to “accommodate the conclusions of the opinion issued by CCPJ and suggestions from DI and delegates”.