O segredo profissional dos jornalistas

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Ana Filipa Duarte
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/19177
• topic: Direito

Protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources as a limit to obtain evidence in Criminal Procedure is the title of a dissertation which seeks first and foremost to provide an insight into the possible limitations to the Criminal Procedure, in particular to the standard of proof, that the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources may lead to. In order to contextualise the object of this study, it begins by looking at the Portuguese Constitution and pointing out the consecration of the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources. Thereafter, there is an analysis of the historical period, which goes from the Classic Antiquity, through the Judicial Reform of 1837 and the dictatorship of Oliveira Salazar, leading to the constitutional review of 1982 and to the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code in 1987, the former, consecrating the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources in the Portuguese Constitution and the later, allowing the journalist to refuse to testify about matters covered by the protection of sources. Then, we define the subjective and the protective scope under the confidentiality of journalistic sources, arguing if it can be qualified as a real professional secrecy and as a duty, or as a right of journalists instead. Finally, we arrive to the point of this work: to determine in which way the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources is a limit to the standard of proof in Criminal Procedure. The article 135º, of the Criminal Procedure Code allows the journalist to refuse to testify, claiming the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources, when he intervenes in a Criminal Procedure as a witness. That leads to an autonomous procedural incident, solved by a superior Court, which will decide for the breach or not of the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources. However, this right is not only a limit to testimonial evidence, but also a limit to certain means of obtaining evidence, such as searches, wiretapping and seizures, requiring the verification of certain formalities for its success and forbidding the production or the valuation of the proof obtained through these evidentiary proceedings, when they collide with the rights and the interests covered by the protection or confidentiality of journalistic sources.