His Excellency  Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva.
President of the Republic of Portugal
Palácio de Belém
Calçada da Ajuda, nº 11
1349-022
Lisboa
Portugal

4 June 2012



Your Excellency

We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries, to again express our serious concern at the deliberate abuse of state funding of the press by the regional government of Madeira and the consequent distortion of the newspaper market and infringement of basic rules of competition.  

We wrote to you on 23 April 2009 regarding the same matter but received no response.   Unfortunately, the situation remains unresolved and, indeed, has worsened.

Empresa Diário de Notícias Lda is the publisher of the Diário de Notícias, the largest circulation paid newspaper in Madeira. The Empresa do Jornal de Madeira Lda (EJM) publishes the Jornal de Madeira and is 99.97 % owned by the Government of the Regional Autonomy of Madeira (RAM).  According to reports, the total support given to the EJM by the RAM from 1993 to 2012 surpasses 45 million Euros.  Since 3 January 2008 the EJM has been distributed free to the public, whilst having cover price of €0.10 and at the same time, RAM continues to unfairly financially favour the state-owned daily by placing a disproportionate amount of advertising with it. For example, in 2011 the RAM placed 172 pages of advertising with Jornal de Madeira  and only 8.5 pages with Diário de Notícias. At the time the EJM was turned into a free newspaper, it is reported that the circulation was matched with that of the Diário de Notícias in what appears to have been a hostile act to deliberately harm the Diário de Notícias .

We believe that the support from the Regional Government of Madeira to Empresa Jornal da Madeira has had a detrimental effect on the pluralism and independence of the media, undermining citizens' rights to freedom of information, by distorting the newspaper market.  

We respectfully call on you to remind the Regional Government of Madeira to respect the dispositions contained in articles 37 and 38 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, in respect freedom of speech and information, in particular the right to inform and be informed without impediments, as well as to respect the norms of a functioning free press, including the respect of competition rules.

Further, we call on you to urge the Regional Government of Madeira to adopt, immediately, measures to end its negative impact on the pluralism and independence of the written daily press.  We draw your attention to the Deliberation of the Governing Council of the Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social (Press and Broadcasting Authority) resolution ERC 5/PLU-I/2010 and its recommendations to preserve pluralism in the written daily press by ensuring the observance of non-discriminatory practices, such as public investment by the RAM that puts into question the principles of transparency and the orientation of editorial policy of the Jornal de Madeira.

We also draw your attention to recommendation nº 1/2009 of the Competition Authorities and respectfully request that the Regional Government of Madeira observes fair competition rules and ensures that any funding assigned which exceeds the value which could be expected to be made by a private investor operating in normal market conditions is made on the basis of objective and non-discriminatory rules.

We are extremely concerned that the Budget for 2012 of the Autonomous Region of Madeira includes €5,051,329 as support for the Empresa Jornal de Madeira. This clearly ignores the recommendations in the above reports and appears to confirm that the Jornal de Madeira is a publicly funded tool to support the President of the Regional Government who has been in continuous office for 34 years. Furthermore, such transfers go well beyond what a private investor could be expected to inject into a media company and are a gross distortion of what should be free and open competition.
 
We would also like to remind you that Prime Minister Dr. Pedro Passos Coelho, prior to being elected, stated publicly that governments should not own media companies, saying that it was untenable for the state to be judge and jury at the same time.

We understand that legislation that was being prepared to end government ownership of news media companies has been suspended. We therefore respectfully call on you to work with your Prime Minister to take all necessary measures to stop the use of public funds in contravention of the principles of freedom of speech as set out in Articles 37 and 38 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

We ask that you do everything in your power to ensure that the Regional Government of Madeira is prevented from continuing to distort the newspaper market in Madeira and that in future it fully respects the rules of free market competition.

Yours sincerely,

Jacob Mathew
President
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers

Erik Bjerager
President
World Editors Forum
 
WAN-IFRA is the global organization for the world’s newspapers and news publishers, with formal representative status at the United Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. The organization groups 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries.


cc:
His Excellency, Dr. José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the European   Commission.
           His Excellency, Dr. Pedro Passos Coelho, Prime Minister.