The government of Pedro Sanchez presented this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers the Action Plan for Democracy with which he seeks to muzzle the media critical of his management. This project, dressed as if it were a plan for democratic regeneration, also advocates trying to silence the media that report cases of corruption that threaten the executive or the family environment of Sánchez. This project began to take shape when it was learned that the wife of the President of the Government, Begoña Gomezwas charged with influence peddling and commercial corruption.
This action plan by Sánchez advocates “transparency and plurality in the information ecosystem” and reserves the decision to the PSOE executive and Sumar. “what is a media” and who are “the real professionals,” referring to media journalists. Among the measures in this plan, it aims to reform the law on institutional advertising in order to “prevent pseudo-media that promote” hoaxes from being financed with public money, as well as to create a media registry “so that their ownership is known” and to “oblige the publication of the money that public administrations invest in the media.”
These are the 13 main measures of Sánchez’s action plan to muzzle critical media:
- Create a media registry with public information about their ownership and the advertising investments they receive.
- Obligation to publish annually the advertising investments of all public administrations.
- Reform of the Institutional Advertising Law to introduce proportionality and non-discrimination criteria, guarantee transparent audience measurement systems and support media in official languages other than Spanish.
- Limit public administration funding to the media, so that no media is promoted or dependent on them.
- Promote the law on professional secrecy of journalists and transpose the directive which protects them from external harassment
- Reform Article 36 of the “gag law,” which punishes the use of images of bodies and security forces.
- Review the regulatory framework to ensure pluralism and avoid media concentration.
- Approve a national strategy to combat disinformation campaigns.
- Reform the law on the protection of honour and privacy and the law regulating the right of rectification.
- Reform of articles of the Penal Code that limit freedom of expression, such as those that refer to state institutions, religious feelings or public ridicule.
- 100 million euro programme to promote digitalisation of media
- Reform the National Commission for Markets and Competition so that it has powers in digital services and media.
- Create a new commission in the Congress of Deputies on disinformation.
“There is still a lot to do”
The Action Plan for Democracy was presented this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers. Those responsible for explaining this project were the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Felix Bolanosand that of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. The Minister of Education and government spokesperson also appeared at the press conference, Pilar Alegriaand the Minister for Equality, Ana Redondo. Sánchez’s executive has been forced to give in to some historical demands of its partners, such as the reform of the law on state secrets or that of insults to the crown or the Spanish flag, so that Junts, ERC, Bildu or the PNV give the green light to muzzle the press. This Sánchez action plan must now be validated by the Congress of Deputies.
Ernest Urtasun will be in charge of implementing control measures on media publishing companies. For Urtasun, this is a “first step, starting from the certainty that there is much to do“According to him, “it is essential that administrations are not financiers of the fake news” and believes that work must be done to “support the work of true professionals.”
The democratic regeneration plan, in addition to directly affecting the media and the companies that manage them, will also have a direct impact on electoral processes with the reform of the electoral law or on institutional communication itself. In the first case, candidates will be obliged to attend electoral debates, although Sánchez himself refused to attend a few years ago. In the second, the Executive wants to expand its own information channels to “have more contact with citizens” and that “it is easier for citizens to know and understand the measures we are adopting to improve their living conditions.”
