Opinion (José Lúcio / Judge): Images and realities.
Sometimes they create is so strong and persistent images that function to conceal the realities to which they relate.
José Lúcio
(Judge President of Beja County)
In our time this power of creating images lies essentially in the media mass, which thus can largely determine what people think about realities that only know through this mediation.
For this reason I have been insisting since long by the need to schedule a constant presence of judiciary issues, and specifically the courts, in the current agenda of traditional media. And being unable to access these, at least take advantage of the open ground for new social networks, who have demonstrated their ability to influence, supplement or to counterbalance the first.
Unfortunately, the idea is good (I think) but difficult to implement. The courts are used to working in silence and routine. In their daily chores little happens that can attract the interest of those who make news, by nature always looking for new, stories, something that marks the difference in the everyday cinzentismo.
So, desgraçadamente, the courts and the judges suffer from a fatal tendency media for your image: They tend to appear only for bad reasons or for the worst reasons. What do well not is of some curiosity, nor is it news story, what bad happened in their sphere of action is the subject of undeniable public relevance.
That way, it is not surprising that images consolidated with the public systematically punish courts, judges or justice in general. What comes to the general public is usually only and only what you can contribute to the degradation of the image.
Some search busily among thousands of sentences available in the databases one where it is possible to locate a clumsy sentence or less happy consideration, with them to build a news story or a scandal if possible - putting aside as useless and boring all these other many thousands of decisions that found nothing that held the attention or break with the banality.
The Ministry of Justice announced to the media in recent days a statement in which he tried to draw attention to the evolution of procedural reality of the Portuguese courts of first instance.
This statement appears, for example, the pending cases in courts of first instance are the lowest of the last twenty-one years; not second quarter 2018 the number of pending civil enforcement actions decreased about 12,8% compared to the end of second quarter 2017, or that 30 June 2018 the number of these actions had the lowest value of the last fifteen years (from 2003 that the number of pending civil enforcement actions in courts of first instance was not so small).
It added that the procedural resolution rate in this area was procedural in second quarter 2018 of 164,2%, and thereby the second quarter of 2018 It was the fifth consecutive quarter with procedural resolution rate of over 150%,
it was stated further that the number of insolvencies enacted was the lowest since 2011 (a year suffered a decrease of 18,8%). More: the average duration of these processes, it was nine months in the second quarter of 2007 featured, no second quarter 2018, less than a quarter of that amount (two months).
This official communication was obviously distributed to all newsrooms of all media. The data contained therein are easily verifiable, since they refer to the publications of the Directorate-General responsible for Justice Policy which are available on the network. A naive citizen might think that the factuality that there clothed undeniable interest news and could lead to a wave of high cash bonds. Because, on the contrary, and as they are to think those who read me, that matter was never just about anyone respectable public. The communication was totally ignored. With this content, so contrary to the mandatory narrative, nothing happens.
How to approach this phenomenon? It's unfair, of course it is. It is very difficult to reverse. For our part, We do not conform managed.
Even because, However, courts continue to work. And we are sure that the results of this work, the truthful, if they are properly known and valued become absurd caricatures that often fill the newspapers.
(Text written under the previous rule to spell AO1990, by the author's option)
