Last April, Pedro Sánchez blocked his schedule for five days to reflect on the accusation of Begoña Gómez for influence peddling and corruption in private companies. This “personal reflection” ended with a commitment: a democratic regeneration plan – today a Democratic Action Plan – to combat the mud machineto whom he blames the judicial investigation into his wife.
Beyond opening the debate on regeneration, the role of the press and justice, Sánchez’s idea is to modify several laws that directly affect the mediabut without detailing the scope of the measures. The fine print will only be known this Tuesday, when they are submitted to the Council of Ministers.
However, both Sánchez in public and private sources have been giving clues for months about how this problem will be solved. The will is clear: to limit institutional advertising and establish maximum public funding for the media.
This can be done in several ways, but it would require reforming Law 29/2005 on advertising and institutional communication, in particular the Articles 3.2, 4 and 7who are the ones who regulate the guarantees and prohibitions of subsidies.
Institutional advertising
In mid-July, Vice President Yolanda Díaz dared to declare that she would withdraw funding from media outlets “that violate ethical codes,” without specifying who would be in charge of developing these codes.
The government’s idea is, as EL ESPAÑOL has already suggested, to rely on the ethics commissions of the press associations – bodies that only have moral value within the profession – so that they are the ones to establish the criteria.
The current question between the parties and the press is how the media will be differentiated, which, in Sánchez’s words, “practice pseudojournalism”those who do not do so and what “codes of ethics” will be followed to discern them. To do this, Moncloa is considering another formula: fines and administrative sanctions (with withdrawal of advertising) for those who have been found guilty of insults or slander.
This is directly linked to another foreseeable change in the Democratic Action Plan: the reform of the so-called “crimes related to freedom of expression” in the Penal Code. Namely, offense to religious feelings, public ridicule, offenses to Spain and its symbols, the crime of insulting the Crown, glorifying terrorism and insulting the government and its institutions.
On the other hand, when developing the new criteria for advertising broadcasting, the government is testing different parameters. The first would be audiences. At present, the measurement system is the result of the publishers’ agreement and therefore accepted by all.
The second, as Vice President María Jesús Montero suggested on July 16, is that new criteria such as impact and diffusion on social networks“the retweet” or the time a reader stays on a news story.
“Public reparation”
Another amendment is also on the table, that of Organic Law 1/1982, of civil protection of the right to honorto personal and family privacy and to one’s own image.
According to sources, the government coalition agreed before the summer to include “public compensation” in the event of the dissemination of information that undermines the honour of persons under judicial investigation, whether or not there is an oral trial.
This is what is commonly called the ashamed of the newsthe mediatization of a person’s name and/or image when he or she is involved, usually as an investigator, in a criminal case that arouses public interest. The criticism of these processes is that, when trials come to nothing, the damage to reputation has already been done.
The aim, according to the government, is to tackle the problem of “pseudo-media” from two angles: to prevent them from being fed by public administrations and to mitigate the effects of their information on the reputation of people under investigation.
European regulations
The argument that the government has been putting forward since before the summer to legitimise the regeneration plan is that there is a European precedent, the Action Plan for Democracy 2020-2024which was supported by the majority of EU parties, including the PP. Spain is not obliged to transpose this regulation, however, but it will be fully applied in August 2025.
It is in this plan, more precisely in the section of Freedom of the mediawhere the first references to transparency and pluralism of the media appeared, a reform of the electoral law to make the mandatory election debates and various transparency laws.
The European legislation on which Sánchez will base his strategy requires companies to publish information about their owners, an initiative that Podemos had already presented in the last legislature.
In essence, Europe is forcing business owners to say what cross-interests might interfere with their editorial line. It is also requiring the publication of its investigators’ microdata.
The European regulation that everyone is referring to was approved by the European Parliament last March and EU member states must implement it in its entirety before August 8, 2025The difference is that it is primarily aimed at protecting journalists from government interference, protecting their sources and ensuring transparency about companies.
