What was billed as “the habitual press conference after the Council of Ministers” was marked on Thursday last week by a German journalist who is said to be making a documentary on the troika years in Portugal.
Harald Schumann, reporting for French-German TV station Arte, asked repeatedly if the minister taking the conference could confirm that there is a press blacklist circulated by the government which ensures that certain key political figures do not speak to certain (key political) journalists.
Schumann told the conference that he had been in touch with various ministers, including finance minister Maria Luís Albuquerque, but that all of them had refused his requests for an interview.
Luís Marques Guedes, the minister taking the conference, repeatedly said he had “no idea” why the ministers in question had been unavailable, but according to Jornal iOnline, this did not stop Schumann’s barrage of inconvenient questions.
As to the existence of a blacklist when it came to journalists, Minister Guedes said Schumann would be better off asking the ministers themselves … which could be difficult of course, if there is a blacklist.
