The Federation of Journalists’ Associations of Spain (FAPE), the Association of Journalists of Madrid (APM) and the Association of Parliamentary Journalists (APP) have in recent hours published a statement in which they condemn the “incident” committed by the hoax promoter Javier Negre, owner of the ultra-digital EDATV, in the press conference room of Congress last Tuesday.
“The Association of Parliamentary Journalists (APP) deplores the incidents that occurred in the press room of the Congress of Deputies on October 29, when a person accredited to the Lower House, accompanied by three other people, reprimanded and uttered serious insults against the and the journalists who carry out their work in the Chambers”, wrote the APP in a press release in which it “trusts” the “action of the authorities of Congress” so that journalists can continue to do their work and do not consent to “the commission of inadmissible acts and behaviors, which are even contrary to the House’s own rules.
Certain facts condemned by press associations have been coming back to Congress for several years. Negre and other credentialed individuals within his company interrupt the press conference, speaking without authorization in many cases to echo unverified information or outright hoaxes. This Tuesday, while the socialist spokesperson, Patxi López, appeared, the agitator turned on his microphone, stealing the turn of the editor-in-chief who had had the floor to accuse him of having “intimidated” one of the workers of his company “with the silent silence of the rest of the journalists.
The press conference is not over but the journalists decide to leave the room in protest. A few minutes later, a journalist asked one of the EDATV employees to cut the video he had recorded of his boss interrupting the press conference, so that his face would not appear on the screen. ‘screen. Unauthorized recording in this newsroom is completely prohibited.
While this conversation was taking place, Negre appeared again, with his cell phone in his hand, to defend his employee and respond to criticism from journalists, who reprimanded him and asked him to stop constantly interrupting normal work Congressional Editors. . “Are you afraid?” he even said to the journalist who had asked that his face not appear in the video.
A little later, Negre and his collaborators launched an online campaign with the video of this press conference, naming one by one the journalists who had reprimanded him. The agitator uses the video signal broadcast by Congress and accompanies the image with audio recorded from the cell phone he had in hand, since the microphones in the press room at that moment are closed.
“This small minority of people accredited to the Congress has tried to destroy, in a repeated attitude, the constant, professional and excellent work of parliamentary journalists, in the very free, plural and diverse context in which political and parliamentary life takes place,” he says. the APP in its declaration, which the APM and FAPE then supported.
“Monitoring and control of the public activity of political power by journalists is essential in a democratic society and must respect the ethical standards of the journalistic profession. Any behavior that hinders the exercise of journalistic work, whether on the part of politicians or informants, constitutes an attack on citizens’ right to truthful information. A right that belongs to citizens and not to journalists or politicians,” he protests.
“They can threaten us, scold us or slander us. These attitudes will in no way diminish the desire of the vast majority of journalists who work in Congress and the Senate to carry out their work. A job which consists of telling, narrating, investigating everything that happens in the Chambers, what we see and what we don’t see. Parliamentary journalists devote themselves to this in plenary sessions, in committee, in informal and formal situations. This is the job of parliamentary journalists,” the press release added.
