The “Action Plan for Democracy” announced today by the government includes the first systematic attempt to limit press freedom, and above all the citizens’ right to informationin forty-five years of democracy.
Based on the European Regulation on Media Freedom (EMFA) in the part relating to what it calls the “information ecosystem”, the government has outlined a plan of sixteen measures (out of a total of thirty-one) that can only be understood as a whole and taking into account the Spanish context.
A context that must include, first of all, the origin of this initiative, the five days of reflection of Pedro Sanchez after the publication of potentially compromising information concerning his wife.
But also the fact that the person responsible for detailing the plan to the press was Ernest Urtasuna minister with no powers in this area and who belongs to a far-left party that has repeatedly called for media intervention and the limitation of freedom of expression and the press.
Original error
The Government’s project is based on an original conceptual error.
Because the holders of the right to information are not the media or journalists, but citizens. This is why Article 20 of the Constitution does not make the media the exclusive guarantors of this right to information, but rather broadly recognizes the right “to freely communicate or receive truthful information by any means of dissemination.”
The press is therefore only one of the intermediaries of this right to information, which can also be guaranteed by other channels and which any citizen can use, whether or not they are part of a conventional journalistic media. Especially at a time when social networks, independent communication professionals and other types of platforms, digital or not, are also relevant actors in this system.
Who decides?
The government could have directly transposed the EMFA without any additional legislation. But it preferred to adapt it by taking it beyond its initial intention, which is not to restrict the right to information under the protection of the fight against hoaxes, but to protect this right and to protect journalists against external pressure.
The regulation itself establishes that this “will not affect the possibility for Member States to adopt more detailed or stricter rules”, but “provided that these rules guarantee a higher level of protection of media pluralism or editorial independence”.
The mere fact that the National Commission for Markets and Competition is entrusted with the definition of what constitutes a media constitutes an effective limitation of citizens’ right to information.
Because how do you decide that it is a means of communication? Based on what criteria? Are they youtubers or the banners? Would an independent columnist with a few assistants who posted his texts on social networks be considered a “medium”?
The transparency defended by the Government and the obligation for administrations and media companies to make public the amounts granted or received in institutional advertising are commendable initiatives. But it is the government, not the communities, that has failed to meet this obligation so far.
Inaccuracy of criteria
The lack of specificity in the criteria for the dissemination of public advertising and the future reform of the law on institutional advertising is also worrying. for the regulation of audience measurement systemswhich the government has suggested are being manipulated to benefit certain companies.
How and through which channels?
Or is the Government considering adding “qualitative” criteria to these measures that would benefit certain media to the detriment of others? That is, certain segments of citizens to the detriment of others.
And one more question. What are the criteria of “transparency, impartiality, inclusiveness, proportionality, non-discrimination, comparability and verifiability” mentioned by the government when there is a meter recommended by the market that has won an open competition?
When, in addition, This competition may be postponed if deemed necessary..
The best regulation
Also worrying is “the improvement of the law on the professional secrecy of journalists as a legal guarantee for the protection of sources”. Professional secrecy is enshrined in the Constitution and it is its lack of regulatory development over the past forty-five years that has allowed the courts to consider it as a preferential right.
It is obvious that from now on, This right will have exceptions.. There is a reason why it has always been said that “the best press law is the one that doesn’t exist.”
The announcement of a “national strategy to combat disinformation campaigns” of undetermined scope is also worrying. Will this fight against disinformation include lies from public administrations or our political representatives, including the President of the Government?
Regarding the announced reform of the right to rectification and the right to honour, it should be mentioned that its limits are now well defined in the Penal Code and in the laws which develop them. It would therefore be sufficient to extend its classification to content distributed via social networks..
The key to the project, as far as the media is concerned, was given by Urtasun when he spoke of the implementation of a “media policy” by the government.
But what “media policy” can an executive that runs the largest media conglomerate in Spain, the one made up of RTVE and Agencia EFE, carry out? A government that, in addition, supervises private pollsters as if the CEI did not exist, led today by someone who belonged to the PSOE executive.
Against hoaxes
Does the existence of a limited percentage of hoaxes, whose impact on the formation of public opinion is, according to all studies carried out to date, of little relevance, justify this media intervention?
The government seems to confuse its own interests with those of the Spanish citizens, relying on the supposed defense of “real journalism.” But there is no real journalism here. There is good journalism and bad journalism. And you only have to study any audience rating to realize that Citizens still overwhelmingly choose good journalism and condemn bad journalism as irrelevant..
It is unlikely that the government will gain support for a media control plan such as the one it has proposed with the alibi of the EMFA, even if it has used as a hook some unspecified measures of positive discrimination for media that broadcast or publish entirely in Catalan, Galician and Basque.
But the mere existence of such a project reveals that in Spain it is not only the institutions that are in danger, but also the fundamental civil liberties of democracy, such as the right to information and freedom of the press.
The government has created a problem for which there was a double solution. That of the current legislation, which would be enough to extend to social networks, and that of self-regulation of the market which arises from the free will of citizens.
