TVE, Pablo Iglesias, journalism, politicians and control of the media in Spain
TVE chairman resigns. No one at the wheel, no news project, says news council. Communist former Deputy PM wants all media controlled by someone.
Have been asked what I think about the resignation this week of Pérez Tornero, the chairman of Spain’s BBC equivalent, TVE, and the media and journalism situation at the minute (full letter here). He says the “minimum conditions for consensus [on the TVE board]” no longer exist. The TVE news council is more prosaic: "there’s no one at the wheel”.
Also on the subject of media and organisation this week in Spain, we have Pablo Iglesias and Carmen Calvo defending political control of the media and Pablo Iglesias in Chile saying a third of the media should be controlled by the politicians, a third by trade unions and a third by big business. But all controlled by somebody.
People in power always want to control independent media, so that we can’t ask impertinent questions about how they use and abuse that power, or write articles analysing a particular situation that makes them look as incompetent as they mostly really are.
They feel that threat and want to neutralise it to protect their image and control the narrative but readers and citizens should perceive the threat to their democracies in this tyrannical instinct of those in power that is contrary to a better understanding of reality.
My first thought here, as always with TVE, is how on earth do they not manage to produce world-class news programmes full of top-quality journalism every day to get us all hooked on a fascinating global daily changing reality with €440 million to spend every year and 1,800 journalists?
There are only 52 provinces in Spain. What are they doing all day?
Pérez Tornero says in his letter that he understood his main mission to be “making RTVE contribute to creating a calm, non-polarised public sphere full of dialogue” but that in the end “minimum conditions for consensus [on the TVE board], or for a plural, stable, coherent majority, and in many cases, not even the right climate for the dialogue we need to finish the project”.
Since at least 2014, politicians in Spain are not interested in a calm, stable, agreeable public sphere. They spend all day seeing who can publish the most polarised, viral quote on Twitter, and how they can wind up the other side as much as possible. If they can work out how to use a printer or a t-shirt or some other visual prop, like Amnesty or Greenpeace, so much the better for getting on TV and the social media videos.
The TVE news council tweeted out a statement with more direct language. This was a disaster: there’s “no one at the wheel”, a “lack of a project”, “low audience figures”, “brand and identity trashed”, with “continuous harrasment and public mistreatment” from the political parties and a “total lack of project” for news.
This is obvious if you subject yourself to watching the lunchtime or evening news for more than a few days in a row.
“Here in this company”, continues the news council’s statement: “workers do journalism, and want to keep doing it. Whoever it bothers and whoever it weighs on”.
Sorry, but from the outside, TVE doesn’t do journalism that weighs on or bothers any politician in Spain.
The news programmes they do with such an enormous budget and all those tools at their disposal are repetitively boring, far too close to whatever the government wants to communicate, and far too simplistic and superficial when dealing with the complex world we live in in 2022, with all of its problems and threats.
Then we have Pablo Iglesias in Chile. The quote, according to this Twitter account, is: “The media need to be controlled. A third of the media must be for politicians, another third for trade unions and community organisations and the other third for big business”.
That’s straight tyranny.
The politicians should get their dirty mits off the press. Almost all media outlets in Spain are more interested in the politicians being involved, though, because their income depends to a large degree on money controlled by politicians: the budget if we’re talking about TVE, government advertising budgets if we’re talking about the rest, or even government-sponsored bailouts like with PRISA group (El País) 10 years ago. And that’s just the national level. The less said about politics and the press in Spain at the regional and local levels, the better.
Long-term, strategically, in a democracy, the press should be far removed from politicians, both in terms of income and in terms of matey contacts and friendly elitist relations.
One of the main roles of journalism is supposed to be holding politicians and other public authorities (police, judges, etc) to account with investigations, articles and questions on behalf of readers and citizens more broadly, in the public sphere, openly, and to do so with certain standards and an impertinent attitude that actually bothers or makes demands on those in power at each level.
It should be a question of principle for journalists but in 99% of the cases we have seen in Spain in the past decade, money and jobs come first, along with worries about what the boss or their colleagues or the bosses of the boss will say. Spain is not a country for independent journalism or for journalism that strives to annoy those in power. Partisan trench warfare, increasing polarisation and matey softball questions are almost the whole game here.
In theory, with €440 million a year and 1,800 journalists on your team, and the technology available in 2022, you should be able to fix this problem for a country. But as Pérez Ternero says in a roundabout way, and the TVE news council in a more direct way, the real game they’re playing is not that one.
TVE “news” programmes do not exist to report on complex, annoying realities. In the best case, they are there to bore everyone for a quiet debate. But they’re not even capable of agreeing to do that, according to the outgoing chairman.
At the other end of the spectrum is the desire of each reader to read independent reporting and analysis and take out their credit card to support it, guarantee it, value it, with €5 or €10 or €20 a month. That democratic triumph is more achievable for everyone in 2022 than ever before, if each person chips in a little.