“Hello, that’s the least we can say,” was how the president and director of EL ESPAÑOL greeted him, Pedro J. Ramirezto Ana Terradillos, presenter of the program The Critical View of Telecinco. Ramirez did not beat around the bush and denounced the fact that “the plan for the regeneration of democracy that the government of Pedro Sanchez presented “systematically cuts citizens’ rights”.
For the journalist, “the emphasis must be clearly placed on the holders of the right to information according to the Constitution, who are neither journalists nor journalistic companies, but citizens.” According to Ramírez, “if all these measures were applied, their right to receive plural and truthful information would be restricted.”
The director of EL ESPAÑOL considers the measures announced on Tuesday in the Council of Ministers to be disastrous because “the project includes restrictive legislation on the right to honor and self-image, the right to rectification, the regulation of professional law… There will be a catalogue of exceptions in which the protection of the Constitution will not apply,” he stressed.
In addition, he indicated that “measures will be established to subjectively control institutional advertising depending on whether the government likes or dislikes a media. Therefore, supposed restrictions on media concentration will be established but without touching the great oligopoly that is the RTVE conglomerate. plus the Efe agency. For Ramírez “A serious regeneration would consist of dismissing today the Secretary of State for Communication, Mr. Francesc Vallèswho on Tuesday exclusively disclosed the government’s regeneration plan to two media outlets before the others.
The president and director of EL ESPAÑOL stressed that “the Executive has said that it is about protecting real journalists, when in reality there are no real and fake journalists. There are good and bad journalists. And I have not heard any good journalist defend this project,” he concluded.
Pedro J. recalled that the results of the GFK (the digital media audience counter) have just been released and that the “top ten” included all the media representatives present today on the La Mirada review set, including the director and president of EL ESPAÑOL. With this, he wanted to emphasize that “Citizens know how to differentiate what constitutes quality information from what does not.”. And be careful, institutional advertising does not go to the media, it goes to citizens; because what we, the media, do is offer public service information.
For Ramirez, what Sánchez intends with this project is “to generate this great confusion of the change of measurement criteria, of a transparency that does not preach. Overall I am very disappointed.“In 45 years of democracy, no government has dared to call a series of restrictive measures applied to citizens a regeneration plan,” he insisted.
