The political and media right is wary of the regeneration plan that the government will approve today and which goes in the direction of what the EU considers essential in terms of the media: that readers are aware of the interests that can be hidden behind the information and of the obligation of institutional declaration. advertising.
The PP is here to give lessons on transparency. Or on freedom of expression. Or on pluralism on public television wherever it governs. Or on the meaning of the fair distribution of institutional advertising. Buying media and journalists is in our DNA. Some clues to this appear in various judicial summaries of the last five years.
Fact: In 2015 alone, the government of Mariano Rajoy distributed 37.7 million euros in government campaigns and never gave an explanation of the criteria used for this distribution.
Fact: 45 million is the amount that Alberto Núñez Feijóo allocated as president of the Xunta to private media publishing companies. The method: direct aid (so-called hit-and-run contracts) and opaque institutional propaganda agreements
Fact: 60% of the advertising in the press distributed by the Community of Madrid, between 2011 and 2015, with Esperanza Aguirre and Ignacio González as presidents, fell on the newspaper. The reason. 48% of radio spots ended up on the same station, Intereconomy. Both have audiences well below the average of their competitors.
Fact: Canal de Isabel II, a regional public company, alone spent 55 million euros on advertising between 2006 and 2015.
Fact: Ayuso spent at least 41.5 million euros on advertising campaigns contracted between 2022 and 2023. That “she bought all the media” is an accusation that does not come from the left, but from Vox’s spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly, Rocío. Monasterio.
You already know that “you don’t need to buy from a media, you just have to be its best customer” that MAR invented a long time ago and still carries to the letter today. The queen of the astracanadas of Sol would not occupy half a minute on the television lists, radio or in the headlines of the press without the rain of millions that she distributes to her friends.
Well, despite the history that the PP is accumulating in this matter and in the accusations and threats against journalists and media that do not see white in what is clearly black, prepare yourself this week to read and listen to all kinds of criticism about the regeneration plan that the Government will approve today in the Council of Ministers. It is nothing more than the development of the regulations approved in the EU to know the ownership of communications companies, establish transparency criteria in the distribution of public aid and put an end to the spread of hoaxes.
Although the PP supported him in Europe, in Spain he has no intention of voting in this sense. They have already said that it is a trick by Sánchez to return to the time of “censorship”, “the greatest attack on freedom of information”, “another milonga” and an attempt to “punish by law the media that report the alleged corruption that torments him.
The right does not seem to be in the mood to move towards what the EU considers essential, namely that readers, listeners or viewers are aware of the interests that may be hidden behind the information they receive. It is also reluctant to accept the obligation to declare the institutional advertising that the media receive, which is of great concern to the EU and which aims to prevent public money from being distributed in a “discriminatory” way or used by governments to buy wills. . It will be for a reason.
And the worst part is that he will have the company of some of his media terminals and, of course, the biggest hoaxers in the country for his fierce opposition. All of them are full of mouths when it comes to demanding transparency in the activity and resources of public institutions, governments, parties and deputies, but when it comes to themselves, they are not willing to come out of the dark. They do not care that journalism, like democracy, also dies in the dark, because beyond the search for truthful information, they are dedicated to something else. For example, promoting alternative facts as a form of deception, hiding the truth, fabricating fake news and the selection of the weakest, for example immigrants, which now concerns them.
