Four in Five Portuguese Journalists Have Thought About Quitting, and More Than Half Report at Least Four Signs of Burnout

Almost four in five journalists in Portugal have considered leaving the profession, and more than half show at least four symptoms of burnout. Those are the headline findings of a study of newsroom working conditions released on Wednesday by the Laboratório Português de Ambientes de Trabalho Saudáveis (Labpats), which surveyed 750 journalists about their health, their workload and the organisations they work for.

The figure that will travel is 79.5 percent: the share of participants who said they had already thought about quitting journalism. The reasons they gave were stagnant pay, the lack of any career progression and excessive workload, followed by the difficulty of reconciling work with family life. The authors warn against reading the number in isolation, describing it instead as "the expression of an imbalance between demands, recognition, stability, progression and the concrete conditions of the work".

Exhausted, and often on shifts

The mental-health indicators are the starkest part of the report. In the four weeks before answering, 46.3 percent of participants said they had felt physically exhausted and 45.6 percent emotionally exhausted. 52.9 percent reported at least four symptoms of burnout, which the authors say points to "professional wear that can no longer be treated as an exclusively individual problem". Fewer than a third said they felt cheerful most or all of the time, and only 15.9 percent said they woke up feeling fresh and rested.

Some 13.8 percent said they often or always felt isolated from others, and 12.9 percent said they had been the target of threats or other physical or psychological abuse, including insults, sexual harassment or exclusion. The authors call for "clear, preventive organisational responses with safe reporting channels".

The working week explains part of it. According to the study, 42.6 percent of respondents work shifts, 36.9 percent work between 40 and 50 hours a week and 12.5 percent work more than 50. More than one in three (36.1 percent) have no contractual stability.

Leadership is the weak point

The report singles out management as a critical area. Only 20.9 percent of participants said they are told about important decisions in advance, 31.7 percent that conflicts are resolved fairly and 32.2 percent that their managers offer good development opportunities. Just over one in four agreed that their organisation focuses on the wellbeing of its staff. Journalists, the authors write, say they want leadership that is more human, empathetic and available, and less controlling.

Remote work received the most positive rating of anything in the survey. Of those able to work at a distance, 62.7 percent said they have the tools they need, 68.1 percent that they do their job better that way and 67.9 percent that it helps them manage their hours. Asked what would help, participants proposed hybrid arrangements, flexible hours, better management of days off, shorter working time and a four-day week.

Still attached to the job

What keeps the picture from being wholly bleak is that the attachment to the work itself survives. More than half (52.3 percent) said they feel motivated and enjoy their work, 59.2 percent that they are satisfied with what they do, and 66.4 percent would choose the profession again. "The problem does not seem to lie in a lack of connection to the profession," the authors conclude, "but in the conditions under which it is exercised."

The study's coordinator, the psychologist Tânia Gaspar, told Lusa that journalists still believe their work has a positive impact on society. "The sense of mission is there," she said, and it matters more, not less, in an environment of digital platforms and disinformation, where people need help telling the true from the false.