I have compiled here the most relevant things I have accomplished professionally over 30 years. It is useful as a portfolio, for the curious, and also to remind me of those I met in their quest for justice. Many did not have favorable outcomes, but their story was recorded. I will keep updating this page with the court cases of each case, so that college students can have easier access to "law in action", raw material that is rarely available to them.
1986
Expresso
I started at the weekly Expresso (1986), in a summer job arranged by a friend of my mother. I was given a stack of foreign magazines to cut out pictures of artists and writers, paste them on cardboard sheets, write the names and put them, alphabetically, inside the metal boxes in the newspaper's archive. At the end of that summer, I was asked if I would like to try my hand at writing something. This was how you so often got started in journalism.
1987
2020
1990
Miami Herald
In 1991, with a grant from the Luso-American Foundation, I did a three-month internship at the giant Miami Herald. I learned a little something, ended up publishing an article (South Florida: see it like a Portuguese Journalist) and brought with me a code of conduct that is an example of clarity. Other codes of conduct that I have kept: ANOP, the Economist, and Globo.
SIC
1992
With a group of journalists also from Expresso (Paulo Camacho, Luís Marques, Ricardo Costa and Reinaldo Serrano), I joined the recently created SIC-TV in 1992, where I specialized in judicial journalism, taking advantage of my law degree.
At that time remarkable investigative programs were launched, such as Trial and Error, presented by David Jessel, who would later become an activist against miscarriages of justice. In the US, the creation of Court TV and the O.J. Simpson case marked a new era in news coverage of criminal cases. Pragmatic, L. Shapiro's (one of O.J.Simpson's lawyers) analysis on the best way to deal with the press: Secrets of a Celebrity Lawyer.
At that time in Portugal, it was the trial of Father Frederico, accused of homosexuality and murder, that attracted attention. Years of tension between the press and the courts followed. Justice became more transparent, but on the other hand it became more permeable to public opinion (see article "The Accomplices of Justice").
AFFAIRE PINTO COELHO c. PORTUGAL (No 1)
2011
The line that divides the right to information from that which protects one's good name, image and privacy is not always easy to draw. I have been condemned twice for abuse of press freedom. However, I appealed to the European Court of Human Rights which ruled in my favor and condemned the Portuguese State for violating the right to information.
AFFAIRE PINTO COELHO c. PORTUGAL (No 2)
2016
