The Council of Europe’s press freedom platform has issued an alert following threats made by the leader of “Desokupa” against journalists from the “Investigation Team” programme of La Sexta. The launch of the level two alert – those that constitute a threat to “freedom of the press” for cases of “intimidation and harassment” – implies a request for an investigation as well as the prosecution of the perpetrator. Atresmedia has already announced that it will denounce the harassment. The institution also expects the Spanish authorities to ensure that journalists and their families are protected from threats.
The journalists’ defense platform compiles the threats made by Daniel Esteve against the program’s team after they contacted him for an interview. “I already have with my CNI addresses of subscribers, telephone numbers, where they take their children to school, addresses of second homes…”, Estève said laughing in several videos posted on social networks between September 8 and 15. “Seriously, we don’t know what’s coming,” he warned before assuring that he had contacted a group of squatters who expressed their intention to illegally plunder the second homes of the program’s workers.
The platform, in place since 2015, has two levels of alert on threats to the work of journalists. One, which includes the most serious with murders, security threats and violence; and second, which encompasses “acts of intimidation and harassment; use by public figures of threatening or seriously offensive language towards members of the media”, among others. This includes Esteve’s acts of intimidation.
In 2023, the platform issued 285 alerts for threats or attacks on press freedom in Europe, according to the annual report published in March this year.
In April, the platform issued an alert following threats made by Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, against elDiario.es. The European institution, which includes 46 countries on the continent, echoed the threats that Ayuso’s right-hand man sent via WhatsApp messages to elDiario.es deputy director Esther Palomera in which he assured that he would “tear apart” the media outlet for information on tax fraud by Ayuso’s partner, Alberto González Amador. “You’re going to have to close down. Go fuck yourself. Idiots,” the message added. Later, Rodríguez started a rumor that “hooded journalists” from that newsroom had tried to break into the couple’s home.
The organization requested an investigation into the false accusations and the targeting of professionals from elDiario.es and El País, which it also placed at alert level two. In its response, the Community of Madrid limited itself to exposing generalities about the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy and not to veto any media outlet to the official acts of the autonomous administration.
The platform has also recently issued alerts on the arrest of two journalists from El Español during a protest against the amnesty, on the detention of Rodrigo Mínguez, a collaborator of El Salto, for recording the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, with his mobile phone, while he was online. his way of voting. and for the refusal of accreditation of a journalist by the government of Murcia.
