Portugal: “Community media is especially needed in these times of great polarisation”
Mensagem de Lisboa is a community-focused media outlet based in the Chiado district in Lisbon, Portugal. Their mission is to disclose the small and human-interest stories in a big metropolis like Lisbon, an objective in line with the opportunity offered by the Local Media for Democracy (LM4D) funding scheme.
“There are only a few projects that allow you to do what this project does: to work at the purely local level,” said Catarina Cavalho, editor and co-founder of Mensagem de Lisboa. “Community media is especially needed in these times of greater polarisation and distancing between communities.”
They partnered with trusted local civic associations that bridged the gap between young individuals from underprivileged communities of the Lisbon Metropolitan area and journalists. These young people are typically disconnected from mainstream news and are often overlooked by the rest of society. The community’s desires for the media were heard by the journalists, and this cooperation aided in the development of following journalistic articles.
“Mensagem de Lisboa opened its popup newsroom in several marginalised districts of Lisbon for several weeks to interact with local communities, understand their problems and co-create content with the members of the communities, including activists, artists, social media influencers and residents,” said Iryna Vidanava, media viability expert at IMS and the LM4D project. “They illustrated how to deeply and meaningfully engage with the community being covered.”
People from the community were paired with journalists and joined them on the field to accompany their work. “We started this time last year, but the work still goes on,” explained Cavalho. Other community groups have reached out to the media outlet to replicate this project in their own neighbourhoods.
When asked about their impact, Cavalho said that the young people they worked with were unaware of the interest their stories could arouse. Cavalho and her team found that they had not raised the trust of the community in the media but the community now understands how social inclusivity can be achieved in the news. Yet, the mainstream media does not pay attention to this topic.
Regional and local media in our country have been disappearing in recent years due to a lack of investment and support for the media, changes in information consumption habits and the general public’s devaluation of the journalistic profession in Portugal. That’s why our Union looks at this specific case as an example and an inspiration, a source of resilience and resistance, which are essential to the practice of journalism. This media outlet gives visibility to stories and people that are never covered in the national media or media mainstream.” – Ana Isabel Costa, Vice-President of Sindicato dos Jornalistas (SJ)
According to the first-ever comparative study on news deserts in the EU, the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) found that Portugal scores most highly on the social inclusiveness risk indicator. Most media present social classes in the media in a traditional way and there is not much diversity within the newsrooms.
