World Press Freedom Day
#inthisday May 3rd, World Press Freedom Day, we remind all journalists who do not give up a Free, Independent and Plural Press.
In Portugal, censorship of the press was installed in the early days of the Military Dictatorship, and over time, the previous censorship of the press extended to all forms of expression, from literature to the fine arts, from radio to cinema. From 1940 the practice was centralized in the Ministry of the Interior, with direct dependence on Salazar. The regime persecuted, threatened, arrested and tortured journalists and intellectuals, and only on 25th of April 1974 censorship was abolished and freedom of the press guaranteed.
The United Nations General Assembly decided to mark this date at its meeting on 20 December 1993, concluding Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration, the international community’s commitment to freedom of the press, and the theme of 2021 will be “Information as a public good”.
