The journalist in the Carnation Revolution

a new professional in the making

Abstract

With the 25 April 1974 and the overthrow of the longstanding dictatorship, Portuguese society will meet multiple and profound transformations. In the media, immediate changes occur, provoked straight away by the possibility to fulfil the journalists’ role in freedom, but also gradual ones, which will happen in parallel with the evolution of the revolutionary process itself.

In this article, we analyse those changes, noting the forthcoming “militant-journalist” and a new professional in the making during 1974-1975, in the context of an unstable legal framework and the lack of a professional deontological code. We argue that what is noticed in the journalistic field in Portugal after 25 April – the journalist as a professional who is committed with and engaged in political action – has a clear resemblance to what occurred in other historic times of regime change.