The Lisbon International Congress of the Press: the dawn of professional journalism

Abstract

This is a study of cultural history that intends to analyse the importance of the international gatherings for the history of the press and journalism. The congresses and their theoretical work provided an important contribution to the exposure and the deepening of those issues that, in the Lisbon Congress, led to the approval of a directive by which each national association should promote journalism within higher education. Centred in this event demonstrates how, without losing completely the sense of mission, journalism became a regulated profession and the journalist a professional with rights and duties inherent in that condition. In connection, the beginnings of the press as mega-industry and the position of the journalist as an employee in the cultural and political global context, with all the class associations, the alliances and social cleavages that this growth caused along the 20th century were patent in the debate occurred in Lisbon, substantiating it in a particularly decisive period of the evolution of democratic society. As a symptom of growth and adaptation, the debate during the Congress crisscrossed several important positions regarding the evolution of journalism, both as an idea and a concept, and as a profession. In addition tobeing a contribution to the research of the history of the press and its main actors in a little-studied chapter the international relations of the press, the relevance of this study lies in the fact of opening for current debates and reflection helping to understand the failures and achievements of contemporaneity.