We are a group of four journalists and academics committed to investigative journalism. This is our proposal to keep it alive in Portugal.
Between 2015 and 2021, media outlets in Portugal lost 49% of their audience, according to the Obercom Statistical Communication Yearbook. The paid circulation of daily newspapers, for example, fell by 79% between 2004 and 2022.
The media companies that own the most prestigious newspapers — Impresa, Global Media Group and Público — suffered losses of more than 50% in their business volumes and revenues between 2007 and 2016, according to another study.
Despite the accumulated losses of the nine largest private media companies reaching 103 million euros between 2017 and 2023, Portugal remains one of the EU countries that mobilises the fewest resources, per capita, for the funding of journalism.
European funding, on the other hand, is also truly insufficient: between 2018 and 2024, journalism-focused projects received 42.2 million euros per year from the European Union. A negligible figure when set against what has been lost over the past decades.
In the same period, the trust of readers, viewers and listeners in the news fell by 12%: according to the Reuters News Report, in 2015, 66% of people living in Portugal trusted Portuguese journalism; in 2025, that number dropped to 54%.
In this context, despite the technological transformations journalism has undergone over the past decade, Portuguese media companies have not invested in the training of their reporters. According to a study by the Journalists' Union, the Casa da Imprensa and the Portuguese Press Association, 59% of journalists working in media outlets received no professional training whatsoever.
In this framework of vulnerability, it has been proven on numerous occasions that Portuguese journalism is at the mercy of very opaque interests. The obscure attempt by the World Opportunity Fund to take control of the Global Media Group was only the latest case.
This crisis strikes the Portuguese media landscape at precisely the moment when journalism is most needed and press freedom is under threat.
In recent years, due to the rise of the far right, we have witnessed the growing discrediting of and violence against journalism and journalists. Just months after a journalist was attacked at a far-right party event, in 2024, the leader of Chega targeted journalists as enemies to be defeated, calling them "enemies of the people".
Investigative journalism never truly took root in Portugal. A study conducted by the authors of this proposal showed that investigative journalism was largely absent from the coverage of the biggest financial scandal of the 21st century in Portugal, the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo. This was before Portuguese journalism entered the deep crisis described above.
Another piece of evidence pointing to the residual presence of investigative journalism in the country is the fact that Portugal is one of the few countries in Europe not represented in the Global Investigative Journalism Network, the largest and most prestigious investigative journalism network in the world. This network was created to support entities that, in response to the journalism crisis, established non-profit organisations to produce journalism delivering original and distinctive stories that, unfortunately, media companies have stopped funding.
If we also look at grants from the Journalism Fund, an essential organisation in the funding of investigative journalism in Europe, we see that Portugal, Portuguese journalists and the country's media outlets are practically absent.
The creation of an investigative journalism centre in Portugal can, however, lay the first foundations for beginning to reverse this cycle. The Portuguese Centre for Investigative Journalism (CPJI) aims to cultivate an environment where investigative journalism — a public good that the Portuguese market has never truly invested in — can flourish.
Following the model of the GIJN, which is growing investigative journalism around the world, CPJI aims to create spaces where this form of journalism — so essential to democracy — can thrive, and to place Portugal on the international map of investigative journalism.
At the core of the model we intend to follow is the articulation between academic research, with a scientific and professional training component, and professional journalism, specifically investigative journalism.
In countries like Portugal, where funding from national donors is very difficult to obtain, major national stories face great difficulty being investigated. The impossibility of securing European grants when the stories being investigated are strictly national (or primarily national) contributes to the residual presence of journalistic investigation in Portugal.
This constraint lies at the heart of our decision to form a collaborative network dedicated to the study, training and practice of investigative journalism.
The main objective of this network will be the study of collaborative, cross-border, national and local investigative journalism, and, in parallel, combining academic research with investigative journalism and data journalism to produce distinctive content. Positioned between study and practice, the network will create a training hub to guide academic research by doctoral students working on investigative journalism.
These students will also be challenged to collaborate in the journalistic investigations we have underway. It is the objective of this training hub to design and implement investigative journalism training activities aimed at local journalists and journalism students at schools with journalism programmes located outside major urban centres.
At the level of studying and promoting investigative journalism, the network's objective is to create and develop databases to be shared with academia and the professional world, particularly with journalists working outside major centres, who are manifestly less equipped to embrace the challenges of investigative and data journalism.
Pedro Coelho is an investigative journalist at SIC. He began his career in 1988.
He is one of the most award-winning journalists in Portugal. He has won two Prémios Gazeta, received the Assembly of the Republic medal commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was most recently honoured with the Mário Mesquita career award.
In 2024, he presided over the 5th Congress of Journalists, which marked the 50th anniversary of democracy and press freedom.
He has been a professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa since 2006. The alliance between academia and journalism has defined his career.
Marisa Torres da Silva is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, where she has been teaching since 2006.
A researcher at ICNOVA, in recent years she has dedicated herself to studying hate speech and the presence of the far right in the online context.
She has published six books and 28 peer-reviewed articles and, in addition to dozens of other scientific publications, has presented nearly 100 papers at national and international conferences on various topics, including investigative journalism.
She was awarded, in 2018, the Santander Prize for the Internationalisation of Scientific Production at NOVA FCSH.
Filipe Teles has been an investigative journalist since the age of 27.
Despite his short career, he has already been nominated for several national and international awards.
In 2023, together with Pedro Coelho, he was among the 12 finalists for the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism, the most prestigious in Europe. No Portuguese team had ever reached this stage of the award.
He studied data journalism at the Lede Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
He is also a doctoral student in Communication Sciences at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He will be the first journalist to hold a doctorate in Investigative Journalism in Portugal.
"It is fundamental to protect and promote investigative journalism and the training and qualification of journalists. The new public space that is being built cannot dispense with the quality of editorial or investigative processes resulting from the principles and ethical rules on which journalism is based. Although journalism may come to take place in new media and in new forms, it cannot dispense with these fundamental principles that have always governed it. For the solidity of these principles and their survival, a strong relationship with science is also fundamental. I can only wish the greatest success to a project that starts from these premises."
"The quality of democracies depends on the freedom that journalists must have to investigate and give us the 'other side' of reality, to awaken us to topics we don't know about, to give voice to those who are silenced. This project is a beacon of hope in times when attacks on press freedom — and therefore on humanist and democratic values — are multiplying."
"The quality of democracies depends on the freedom that journalists must have to investigate and give us the 'other side' of reality, to awaken us to topics we don't know about, to give voice to those who are silenced. This project is a beacon of hope in times when attacks on press freedom — and therefore on humanist and democratic values — are multiplying."
"In times of disinformation and fake news, supporting independent investigative journalism is a civic imperative to protect democracy, the rule of law and the values of truth and decency."
The former President of the Republic supports CPJI, considers this a "Very interesting initiative", promising to attend events that will be organised by CPJI.
"This initiative seems to me essential for journalism to be able to exist again in Portugal, not as a megaphone for opinions, but as a promoter of the truth and facts that are hardest to find."
"Defending and promoting investigative journalism means defending and promoting scrutiny of all powers. Without it, society is defenceless against authoritarianism, arbitrariness, negligence, incompetence or corruption. CPJI can be an anchor so that this serious scrutiny, which demands time and resources, does not succumb to the journalism crisis, which accompanies the crisis of democracy."
"Never as now has it been so important to defend journalism and what is fundamental in journalism, which is investigative journalism. In a time when democracies are threatened by the spread of disinformation on social networks and in media outlets that are captured or serving private interests, or hostage to a commercial logic that only seeks audience, or controlled by various governments or simply weakened and diminished in their capacity to inform, it is necessary to find new paths for journalism. A project like this from CPJI, which is based on journalistic investigation and is anchored in academia, must be supported by all of us who defend a free, independent and rigorous journalism, indispensable for a democracy that wants to be stronger every day."
"There are no full societies or democracies without free and independent journalism, with absolute financial autonomy and consequent journalistic rigour. Investigative journalism, indispensable to the community, is the maximum expression of journalism, of independence, of freedom, of democracy. For the sake of its own future, Portugal cannot fail to have a permanent place among the countries that practice it, consume it and fund it."
"Only truth serves the work of the journalist. Only serious investigation can combat political shackles and attacks on democracy. This independent investigative journalism project can and should be a path to value a profession at risk."
"Without journalism there is no democracy. Without investigative journalism, truth is amputated and freedom becomes a chimera, because pressures take diverse forms and, to the eyes of the unwary, they can be imperceptible. Freedom has no price."
"The promotion of alliances between the academic and professional spheres as embodied in this project is today indispensable both for the defence of journalism and democracy. Offering a holistic perspective of the constraints faced by journalism – and even more so by investigative journalism – is the added value that, in this context, is expected from the University. It falls to professionals, in newsrooms and beyond, to fight, with courage, for the affirmation of journalism. By proposing the creation of bridges between the two fields and encouraging collaborative models, this project gains particular relevance."
"I grew up watching the News and the Diário de Notícias that my father brought home every day. Nothing more. It seems a narrow world compared to the amount of information I have at my disposal today, much of it free and that I prefer to ignore. Never before has the present been so full of opinion, reaction, hollow verification of meaning. Investigation with substance, without prejudices, without pressures and broad in its exploration is what we lack. I hope you can fulfil it."
"La audacia de esta iniciativa refleja muy bien el que siempre ha sido el ADN de los portugueses: lanzarse a grandes proyectos y conquistas. Hoy, más que nunca, necesitamos reconquistar el buen periodismo. Y en la esencia de este buen periodismo está la investigación. El CPJI es una apuesta necesaria y comprometida, desde la academia y desde el oficio, para poner en pie y reconstruir este periodismo, indispensable para el sistema democrático. Desde la Asociación de Periodistas de Investigación de España y la URJC estaremos a disposición de este gran equipo para colaborar en esta gran aventura."