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The creation of the press ombudsman, although rather recent in Portugal (the first ones were appointed in 1997), seemed to be one of the most stimulating mechanisms of self-regulation, making media more accountable to their audience and, thus, helping them to meet their unavoidable ethical responsibilities in a more public, transparent way. In the first years of the 21st century, three of the most influential Portuguese daily newspapers had an ombudsman; in 2006, the Public Service of Broadcasting (PSB) joined this trend too, appointing an ombudsman for RTP (the Portuguese public television) and another one for RDP (the public radio). Monitoring and scrutinizing the daily activity of each specific medium, as well as getting complaints and questions from their audiences, all these ombudsman have one trait in common: on a weekly basis, they address directly to the public and freely deal with the issues they have been asked to, criticizing ethical or professional misbehaviors, explaining the possible constraints inside the media outlets, suggesting ways of improving standards. And they do so in absolute freedom, in the pages (or broadcasting time) of the media they work for, helping them to self-regulate on a total voluntary basis, without any interference from outside powers.
In spite of these apparent advantages, this particular MAS (from “Media Accountability Systems” – cf. Claude-Jean Bertrand, 1999) seems to be loosing some influence in the country: for the time being, only one daily newspaper keeps an ombudsman, together with the ombudsman for RTP and RDP. There is some evidence that a similar trend can be traced in other countries, namely in the USA. The main reasons for this might be the severe financial crisis and a general decrease in audience (mainly in the written press), which is forcing media companies to cut jobs and to try to diminish losses. But, at the same time, there is also some debate about the effective possibility of ombudsman to really improve media quality and raise ethical standards, rather than being some kind of ‘public relations service’ intended to soften the relationship between the media and their ‘customers’.
In this paper, we start with an historical overview on the creation and development of media ombudsman, concentrating particularly on the Portuguese situation. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this self-regulatory instrument, using both the existing literature on the subject and empirical data collected from the field. In this particular area, we use the results of a large questionnaire we’ve run among the 15 persons who have already worked as media ombudsman in Portugal, from 1997 to the present day. Finally, we try to get to some conclusions, in order to understand to what extent media ombudsman (and, more generally, the mechanisms of media self-regulation) are loosing power and influence in the present media landscape, and how their role could be reinforced in order to improve journalistic standards in a particularly critical environment.