Accountability and transparency in the media

the example of Spain for the Portuguese-speaking countries

Abstract

Some of the emerging challenges in journalistic ethics are related to the ability of professionals and the media to adopt good practices of accountability and transparency in their methods and procedures. Besides the creation of instruments to facilitate a closer rapprochement between information producers and their audiences, a defiance of local professional cultures is still necessary. Within the entire Portuguese language community, the most advanced countries in journalistic transparency and accountability are Portugal and Brazil, but this condition does not exempt them from improving their systems and developing more effective solutions to strengthen ethics in the media. In this paper, we present partial results of the research "Accountability and journalistic cultures in Spain: impact and proposal of good practices in the Spanish media" based on focal groups with experts in communication ethics. We realize that the Spanish reality - complex, dynamic, and specific - is not very different from the reality of Portuguese-speaking countries and the considerations of experts offer potentially implementable contributions to our context.