The stabbing of a young man in Algorta, Biscay, in May, has become a crime committed by “five Maghreb menas”, according to the far-right Twitter accounts favored for being subscribers to the social network. Ertzaintza has denied this paternity. A child murdered in Mocejón, Toledo, in August, which was also sold online as a murder committed by a foreigner, when the detainee was of Spanish nationality. Disinformation is not only a danger that comes from abroad – this is what most worries the European Commission – but it acts within each country with the aim of poisoning social relations.
It is not only the networks that are the scene of this dissemination of lies with political intent. The media are also responsible for errors and manipulations that call into question the constitutional right of the Spanish to receive “truthful information”. But the political parties are not watching this spectacle from the sidelines. The atmosphere of tension is worth finding something that describes the adversary in the most abject terms. Can this problem be solved with legislative reforms? The government believes so.
This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved a project called the “regeneration plan” with a more than ambitious objective. “We want to strengthen the cleanliness of democracy,” in the words of the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños. First of all, the magnitude of the reforms raises doubts about whether Spain is “a full democracy,” as the government likes to claim, whether it urgently needs to regenerate. This is what happens when you become attached to a slogan that becomes an inalienable principle.
There was a time when the separatists said that Spain was a waste of democracy, that it was like Turkey. Today, it is the Spanish right that claims that Spain is on the road to a dictatorship, and it is directly referring to Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the temperature of the media right reaches its maximum boiling point every day, denouncing the government’s misdeeds by all means and enjoying wide coverage on national television. This is not exactly what is happening in Venezuela or Turkey.
What is beyond doubt is that whenever a government or parliament gets involved in a matter affecting freedom of expression, it should be given careful consideration. The final product may not be as good as what appears in the catalogue or in advertising.
In line with what the European institutions have already ordered, the government is demanding greater transparency from the media, most of which are private, both in terms of ownership and the income they derive from the publication of institutional advertising. This information will appear in “a public register of media” that will be controlled by the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC).
What do you have to be to appear there? The difficulty is knowing who establishes the criteria. It is impossible for the government to decide who can be a journalist. Minister Ernest Urtasun spoke at the press conference about the need to prevent the financing of pseudo-media through institutional advertising. Bolaños did not use that word, but it does not matter because the one who has done so on several occasions is Pedro Sánchez. The president said in June that it was necessary to “put an end to the impunity of certain pseudo-media largely financed by the far-right coalition governments between the PP and Vox.”
All members of the CNMC are appointed by the Government. A congressional commission can veto them by absolute majority. Its president has a non-renewable six-year term. Urtasun commented that this register must be prepared “by an organization that does not depend on the government.” It will therefore be necessary to see how the electoral process of the Commission will be modified.
To illustrate the limits of any intervention, we must not forget that the media, which in theory are nothing pseudo In the previous legislature, they published false information about the financing of Podemos promoted by the Interior Ministry of the Rajoy government. Sometimes, you don’t have to be a digital beach bar favored by a government with public funds to publish lies. The line between error and conscious manipulation can be very thin. But as has often been seen with public television, there is no line. Everything responds to a political interest.
Granting governments and parliaments the power to decide which media can be recognised as such is also questionable. It is difficult to enforce pluralism in regional television channels that serve the interests of the PP in Madrid or Galicia, as well as other parties in other communities. The profile of the presidents chosen for these networks already says everything about their priorities.
The government will also promote legal reform to combat hoaxes through the right of rectification. “In cases of defamation, lies and hoaxes, the courts must respond quickly and effectively,” Bolaños said. In the end, everything will still depend on the decision of a court.
The Popular Party expressed its opposition to the changes before the press conference that followed the start of the Council of Ministers, during which the measures were summarized without going into very specific details. Sánchez “is not the one who hands out media licenses or journalist cards,” Miguel Tellado said. “The democratic deficit in Spain is not caused by the media. Sánchez and his government have it.
The “regeneration” offensive was promoted by Pedro Sánchez after his wife began to be investigated by a Madrid court at the initiative of several far-right organizations. The president denounced the existence of a “mud machine,” a concept that Podemos used in the previous legislature and that the socialists then resisted using.
The legislative package goes beyond the issue of disinformation. The PSOE and Sumar are committed to reforming the gag law, although to do so they need the support of parties such as Esquerra and EH Bildu, who refused to vote in favor of it unless it included a ban on rubber bullets and hot refunds at the borders.
Another commitment: reforming the law on state secrets, whose origins date back to the Franco regime. This is another recurring topic in Congress, promoted on several occasions by the PNV, which until now has not generated much interest within the PSOE. At least the last time, the deadline for submitting amendments was extended until the end of the legislature.
The crisis of disinformation, which is by no means limited to Spain in Europe, is one of those problems whose serious consequences far exceed the number of effective or viable solutions in a democracy. Regarding several of the changes presented, there is also no clear majority in Congress that would allow them to be approved, especially if they are organic laws, such as the Penal Code, which require an absolute majority. It remains to be seen whether the great offensive ultimately results in more losses than victories.
This will provoke a furious debate in which all politicians will present themselves as champions of media freedom to criticize others (but even less themselves). Even Isabel Díaz Ayuso hastened to declare that “she would never use the media of the Community of Madrid to attack journalists.” Here, we must make an effort not to laugh. This is the same policy that has Miguel Ángel Rodríguez as its chief of staff, someone who has a long history of threats of all kinds against journalists.
It’s always the same thing. As in the case of Sartre’s phrase, those who attack freedom of expression are always others.
