Pepa Millán arrived at TVE with a paper bomb that she had printed at home and that was going to question elDiario.es, a real ink on a blank page as an undeniable weapon of an ethical and journalistic crime. What he did not expect was that a live journalism would be made, that Esther Palomera would ask him for the role and ruin his plan with a live “fact check”.
Vox spokesman lies on public television: the party did not answer elDiario.es’ questions about its financing
The journalist from elDiario.es, Esther Palomera, went to the talk show La Noche en 24 Horas, on TVE, as she does every Wednesday, to talk about current politics. There, Vox’s spokesperson in Congress, Pepa Millán, interviewed by the program, was waiting for her with an explosive paper that she had printed from home and that would question her media, real ink on a blank page like an undeniable weapon of an ethical and journalistic crime.
That same morning, elDiario.es had published the latest accounts of Abascal’s foundation, Disenso. They specified that personnel expenses, the director’s salary and other general expenses had increased, all subsidized by Vox, the same year that the party had to request a loan of 9 million to face the elections. The members’ money and public subsidies that travel from Abascal’s party to Abascal’s foundation, rain or shine, whether there is money in the box or not. To find the accounts today, just click on their website, transparency section. There, they are posted and audited.
It was 10:30 pm and the package of measures presented by the government against disinformation was still burning on the discussion table, when Millán experienced what that same package sought to reverse: the practical example of disinformation and gratuitous lies. He searched his notes and attacked, trying to surprise Palomera: elDiario.es was lying in the information published that Wednesday, and the proof that it was a pseudomedia was that the journalist who had written the information (me) had ignored the answers that the foundation had sent him by email. A typical case where a journalist takes the trouble to contact a source to ask questions and then throws away the answers.
The issue was no longer the money transfers that give Vox so much headache among its members and detractors – it is difficult to explain the willingness to transfer money from a political party to a private foundation when one is in debt – but rather the discrediting of the media. to cancel your message. If the mouth is not credible, it does not matter what comes out of it. Once trust is annihilated, everything becomes doubtful.
The situation was surreal until the journalist, seeing the trick the MP was doing to her while she showed the camera a paper that was supposed to be an email with the responses sent, had the lucidity to ask him for the paper, which is to do journalism directly, assuming the risks that this entails. The piece of paper went around the table, passed in front of the presenter, until it reached her. He quickly realized that what was supposed to be an email was not one, that it did not say what Millán had said and that the proof of the responses sent was actually an internal party report. The only truth in this story was the paper, which was made of cellulose.
Although I was told that if I wanted to ask specific questions I should do so in writing by email, the Vox Foundation never sent a response to the four specific questions I asked on Tuesday, September 17 at 2:30 p.m. in an email. Millán said on TVE that these were questions more typical of a “police questionnaire.” The questions asked by elDiario.es were: “Only one person appears as a senior manager, the director, who earns 91,000. Is there anyone who earns more than him at Disenso?”, “Does Mr. Kiko Méndez Monasterio have a salary at Disenso?”, “Who are the main suppliers (the 800,000 euros allocated to external professionals) of the foundation? They plan to introduce a Vox subsidy of 2.5 million also in 2024?”
“I’m live, assure me that they never sent you a response from Vox,” Palomera wrote to me from the set, where she was forced to refute in real time and by surprise the lies of the political spokesperson without having access to my email. The moment was critical and, playing devil’s advocate, I also checked the spam just in case. Nothing. Despite the fact that Vox had opened the mud valves, the journalist swam and continued to act like a journalist, confirming with me what she already knew thanks to the article and after reviewing the documentation that had just been sent to her. Triple check against infamy.
What was seen live on public television turned out to be miraculously good for journalism, because Palomera was not intimidated, he had the expertise to ask for evidence while the interview was going on, analyze it and compare it in a few minutes live. He had the courage to tell her “she is lying and she knows it”, because it was as crude as it was naive to believe that a representative does not know how to distinguish between an internal report and an email sent, no matter how much she might be confused by showing it from afar to a camera.
Even if he had the reflex to reveal the lie, we cannot accept that journalism must defend itself every day and everywhere against the outbursts and false accusations of public representatives. The arrival of the extreme right and the unscrupulous social networks in which it navigates have led us to devote time and energy to proving that we are telling the truth, time that is no longer invested in writing articles to unmask other lies. It should not be admissible that a representative (in this case also the parliamentary spokesperson of a party), on television, can play with reality, distort it, throw it in the face of those present and wait to see if they catch it. It should not, but it happens, it has been too long now.
