Journalists’ syndicate condemns “step backwards in democratic values”
Portugal’s right wing party CHEGA has created yet another media storm, this time by accusing journalists of being “enemies of the people” – an expression, stress reports, used liberally by Donald Trump.
Fur started flying yesterday when journalists quizzed CHEGA leader André Ventura about a video clip posted on his social networks showing part of his interaction with an immigrant who approached him at a campaign event in Póvoa de Varzim on Thursday.
According to reports, CHEGA manipulated the clip (originally shown on SIC) to suggest the man had lied about his nationality and profession.
In CHEGA’s subtitles, the immigrant claims to be Indonesian and a fisherman, even though he told reporters he was from Bangladesh.
According to Observador online, “CHEGA left out the part where André Ventura asks the man directly if he works in fishing (to which he replied, in strained Portuguese, that he works in greenhouses and that he helps other Indonesian immigrants who are fishermen)”.
When questioned about this by journalists, Ventura denied the video had been manipulated, insisting that the man told had him he was from Indonesia and “then said he was from Bangladesh”.
As Observador remarks, the CHEGA leader opted to “turn against the media, especially SIC, labelling the work done by this television station as ‘miserable’.
“If anyone lied first it was you”, he said. “Yesterday you were the enemies of the people, the enemies of the people. By sharing a lying, false piece and manipulating people”.
While the message of the immigrant, named as Iqbar, has been momentarily lost in this furore (he approached Ventura to complain the politician and his party are racist: see below), Ventura’s statements have incensed the Syndicate of Journalists (SJ), which consider he has engineered “a step backwards in democratic values”.
In a publication on its website today, the syndicate recalls “this kind of accusation has already been used by other political forces in other nations, including leaders considered anti-democratic, in reaction to the work of scrutinising actions, statements and coherence of political figures and forces”.
Condemning what it views as ‘inciting statements against journalists’, the syndicate accuses CHEGA of manipulating the video and spreading it on social media “with the aim of creating an alternative version of facts reported by journalists in the fulfilment of their duties through a deliberate action of disinformation”.
In view of this situation, the syndicate expects CHEGA to clarify the importance it as a party attaches to free and independent journalism, and to “retract its leader’s statements”, which it considers to be “profoundly unfair, pointing to a regression in democratic values by those who should be at the forefront of their defence”.
The union has also said it is unable to accept the request for a meeting made by Jorge Galveias, a CHEGA MP and vice-chairman of the 12th Committee on Culture, Communication, Youth and Sport.
“The SJ believes that there are no conditions for a meeting with someone who attacks with the aim of discrediting and slandering the journalistic profession and the media”, it explains.
MEANTIME, the reason the Bangladeshi immigrant approach Ventura in the first place was to make the case for immigrants in Portugal; explain how much they are needed, and how hard they work.
An eight-minute clip of the interaction can be viewed on SIC Notícias site.
It should be said that Ventura also tried to suggest the whole episode had been pre-organised by “political adversaries”/ “everybody who is against us”. SIC reports that its journalists returned to Póvoa de Varzim to re-interview Iqbar, to hear he knows no-one who could have organised the interaction, and acted, in desperation, on his own initiative.
