Lisbon, Feb. 4, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's minister of parliamentary affairs said on Tuesday that he never tires of praising the role that Lusa plays in the sector and reiterated that the news agency is a guarantee for Portuguese democracy.

Pedro Duarte was speaking at the parliamentary committee on Culture, Communication, Youth and Sport as part of a procedural hearing.

‘I never tire of praising the role the Lusa news agency plays,’ he said in his opening remarks.

‘Lusa is often on a second level and therefore doesn't have the same visibility as the media organisations that are on the front line, but in fact the role Lusa plays as a guarantor of our democracy is absolutely fundamental,’ the minister said.

Regarding the state of the media in Portugal, the minister said he had no ‘magic solutions for a crisis of this nature’, adding that it was a ‘very structural problem’.

He also recalled that ‘there is no journalism without journalists and there is no democracy without journalism’, stressing that the government is working on ‘subscription programmes, media literacy programmes and programmes against disinformation’.

He also emphasised that the national media literacy plan is currently under public consultation’ and added that a study will be carried out to assess the impact of Artificial Intelligence on journalism.

The study will be carried out by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation so that, according to the minister, it ‘has total independence and autonomy’.

AJR/ADB // ADB.

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