Lusa Wakes Up Without a News Director for the First Time, as the Regulator Sits on Two Rival Nominations
Portugal's state news agency has had no director of information since midnight. The board named a permanent pick and then an interim one; the media regulator has ruled on neither, and the newsroom council says the vacancy breaks the Press Law.
Lusa, Portugal's state-owned news agency, has had no director of information in office since midnight on Saturday 7 November. Its Conselho de Redação (newsroom council, the body journalists elect to give opinions on editorial matters) said in a note sent just after 00:00 that "for the first time in its history" the agency has no news director in post, "not even on an interim basis", and that this "violates the law".
Lusa matters well beyond its own website. The council itself calls it the only Portuguese news agency, and its wire copy feeds most Portuguese newsrooms, English-language sites included. A fight over who runs its newsroom is a fight over the source behind much of the news residents read every day.
How the post came to be empty
The last permanent director, Luísa Meireles, left on 12 October after accepting an exit offered by the board, as we reported at the time. Her deputies, Nuno Simas and Maria de Deus Rodrigues, ran the newsroom on an interim basis, and on 29 October agreed to stay one more week, until 6 November.
On 30 October the Conselho de Administração (board of directors) announced through Lusa that it had invited Diana Ramos, director of the business daily Jornal de Negócios for the past five years and eight months, to take the job permanently. It asked for the two opinions the law requires: one from the newsroom council and one from the ERC (Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social, the media regulator), whose opinion on directors of state-owned media is binding.
The council's elected members gave a negative opinion: two voted against, saying the moment called for someone with public-service news experience who could have been found inside the agency, and three abstained, RTP reported. The ERC has not yet ruled on her name.
On Friday 6 November, the day the interim mandate ran out, the board invited Pedro Sousa Carvalho, Lusa's managing editor since 2023, to serve as interim director. The council says the board sent that request with "exceptional urgency" less than seven hours before the deadline. It abstained, and accused the board of exposing the agency to "total misgovernment". Asked by Lusa, the board said it had nothing to add to its statement.
What the newsroom council says now
In its midnight note, carried by RTP, the council said that without an ERC opinion on either nominee the post is vacant. It noted that the regulator has ten days to give its opinion and that the request on Diana Ramos was made seven days ago. It argued the vacancy breaches article 19 of the Lei de Imprensa (Press Law), which requires periodical publications to have a director, and reminded staff that the Journalists' Statute lets them refuse editorial instructions from anyone who does not hold an editorial management post. It blamed the board, appointed in January by the Minister of the Presidency.
The ERC had published no statement on Lusa on its website by Saturday morning.
What it means for you
- Lusa's service continues: the agency's own reports on the vacancy went out on the wire overnight, and the council urged journalists to keep working.
- Until the ERC rules on one of the two names, the newsroom council's position is that the post of the person legally answerable for what Lusa publishes is vacant.
- The wider dispute is unresolved. In September the ERC found the government's restructuring of Lusa "not in conformity" with the applicable rules, and on 16 October parliament rejected four bills that would have changed how the agency is governed.
