The Minister of the Presidency admitted this Wednesday (29) that the free newspaper subscription program for young people “did not work” and that an analysis should be carried out on the reason, considering the possibility of a campaign to relaunch it.
António Leitão Amaro was speaking in Parliament, as part of the specialized assessment of the State Budget proposal for 2026 (OE2026), in a joint hearing of the Culture, Communication, Youth and Sports and Budget, Finance and Public Administration committees.
“We can study” the method of accessing and registering young digital signatures, admitted the minister in the third round, in a marathon of almost five hours of listening. “Did the program go well? 4,500 signatures doesn’t seem like a model that wants it and for an instrument that would like to change the paradigm of young people’s access to the press, honestly, I don’t think it worked”, considered the government official.
Ignorance, inaccessibility or disinterest?
“Now, there are three hypotheses, the first is that young people are unaware of the program”, he continued, admitting the possibility of carrying out an institutional campaign, as it was previously not possible due to the elections.
The second hypothesis is: “is there any technical complexity of access? We are studying it”, he added.
The third and final hypothesis is that “young people don’t want it”.
If so, “are we then going to give them things that they don’t want to consume? Who does that question? It doesn’t question the State to make this measure available. It questions the media that should try to offer something they want. I don’t know what the answer is, but we’re going to look, in particular, even testing solutions” and adjust the access and authentication method.
Minister prefers to “do things well” in supporting local media
“Regarding support for the distribution of local media” to combat the news desert and the distributor Vasp, the minister took stock of the situation.
“We understand that there is a public value of territorial cohesion in ensuring that there is no news desert, whether in the production of news from low-density territories, or by reaching news from national media or regional and local media to low-density territories, one of these ways is postage paid, the other, for daily distribution, is to look for instruments to support distribution in situations of need”, the minister told deputies.
In fact, “to the extent that we want to design an instrument to subsidize a very concrete distribution activity where the reduction in the number of people, the reduction in the number of consumption no longer makes the distribution operation sustainable or as sustainable and profitable and there may be a logic of distribution operation, a public service obligation and a logic of compensation”, it must be organized with competition rules, guaranteeing the defense of the public interest, “which is what we are trying to ensure”, he continued.
In other words, “that we do not create inadequate income for anyone, that we do not benefit anyone, that we open up to competition, we have nothing against anyone nor against the entity that currently distributes, being a de facto monopolist, as it is, increases our obligations in the care and integrity of the design of the public tender”, he highlighted.
“We are subsidizing the arrival in some municipalities where the cost was more unsustainable, trying to ensure that what we are actually bearing is that additional cost aggravated in low-density territories and not cross-funding the rest of the operation”, said Leitão Amaro.
But “we want an open, competitive, economically rational process that defends the public interest, if it takes a little longer, I prefer to do things well”, he concluded.
Leitão Amaro questions the existence of RTP Play
Regarding RTP, the minister said that it has two immediate challenges and one long-term one.
“The immediate issues are financial rebalancing, without asking taxpayers for more money and modernizing, we are doing this, with demands”, he highlighted. The long-term one is “knowing what the vocation of public service is”.
“I think that as long as we have a public service, it has to be paid, while it has to be paid, it has to be paid in the form of a tax, now there is one thing, we don’t have to pay any more”, said António Leitão Amaro, in the second round of the hearing within the scope of the specialized assessment of the State Budget proposal for 2026 (OE2026), in a joint hearing of the Culture, Communication, Youth and Sports and Budget, Finance and Public Administration committees.
In his intervention, the minister also questioned whether it made sense for RTP to be competing in streaming, saying that reflection was needed.
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