Pedro Sánchez threatens press freedom in the style of Orban, Milei or Putin and confronts the EU

The five-day order launched by Pedro Sanchez It ended in an unusual pirouette by the president, who suggested slamming the door and ended up dropping that he is willing to remain in La Moncloa until 2030 (since he states that he intends to finish the current term and does not rule out running in the next general elections).

The socialist complains about the “hoaxes” against Begoña Gomez, although it does not specify which ones; attacks “pseudo-digital media” and does not say who they are; and does not explain what measures it will take against the ‘Fachosfera’ or ‘mud machine’ that is supposed to hold democracy in Spain. But they seem to forget that the red lines that separate information from defamation are differentiated in the Penal Code.

“I have been another victim of a well-designed strategy and a well-oiled mud machinery. We believe that misinformation comes to us from outside and it turns out that inside, we have the Trojan horse,” said the president in his post-reflection week amid accusations of personalism and victimhood.

“Article 20 of the Constitution says that citizens enjoy the right to have truthful information. Information in democracy is fundamental, but if the truth is confused with lies, it becomes public enemy number one and we are perverting democracy,” it states.

“Freedom of information is not freedom to defame”

Sánchez is correct in pointing out that “Freedom of information is not freedom to defame”but that is what the courts are for and even though they warn of the excesses of some media, in La Moncloa they should know that the remedy is always worse than the disease (and these ‘remedies’ hit against free journalism, which is an essential element for there to be full democracy).

It is true that the President of the Government’s speech is not exceptional, without going too far from Puerta del Sol we can find leaders who seek polarization, manipulate public media, or distribute advertising arbitrarily.

The exceptional fact of Sánchez, which would mean crossing the undemocratic Mississippi, is that the president of the Government does not rule out legislating against freedom of the press, which would force Spain to return to the moments before the Press Law promoted in 1966 by Manuel Fraga (which ended the prior censorship promoted in 1938 by the civil war legislation of Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s son).

With his messianism, Sánchez has ignored his team, party, fellow Government members and investiture partners (who learned of his Caesarist decision alongside the citizens) and, without having to go back to dictators from another century, we can set the time with other contemporary leaders, some labeled as autocrats and undemocratic: some emerging from free elections such as Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni or Javier Milei and others, enjoy of conditioned ballot boxes, Vladimir Putin o Nicolas Maduro. All of them curtail press freedom, invoking reasons of national security or attacks with hoaxes or fake news.

Liberticide

The Italian president Giorgia Meloni has begun to condition the media with the assault on RAI (ending the lotizzazione that ‘distributed’ control of the channels between the main parties), its attempt to sell the Agi news agency to the far-right deputy Antonio Angelucci and the presentation of the Cybersecurity law that contemplates the imprisonment for 3 years of journalists who obtain information from sources who have committed a crime by disseminating the news.

Sánchez could also follow the liberticidal path of the Argentine president Javier Milei, which the Committee to Protect Journalists has asked to stop “stigmatizing journalists” and allow them to “do their work without restrictions.” The Argentine media has been defined by the neoliberal politician as “the worst sewer in the universe.”

The Spanish socialist could stand in front of the mirror of the Hungarian president Viktor Orban and other Eastern leaders who terrify the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism, which points out in a recent report that at the end of 2023 up to 120 journalists remained detained, the majority in Belarus (38) and Russia (27) . One of them is the Basque Pablo González, and another is the famous Julian Assange, imprisoned in the United Kingdom.

On the other side of the pond things are not better, showing worrying symptoms in countries once considered exemplary such as the United States. One of the culprits of the toxic environment of the cradle of capitalism is Donald Trump, that persecuted media while using lies as a habitual card. According to The Washington Post, Trump exceeded 15,000 lies in his 4 years as president (which implies that he spouted almost 15 hoaxes a day).

Problems in the EU

The NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) has just published the report ‘I can’t do my job as a journalist. The systematic undermining of press freedom in Hungary’, which denounces the politicized regulation of the media in the Magyar country, the decline of pluralism, government interference in editorial work, the limitation of journalists’ access to government information, the use of spy programs such as Pegasus against journalists , and smear campaigns against independent reporters. President Orban promoted nothing more than a Media Council with members of pamphlets related to his illiberal Executive coming to power.

Sánchez could confront the EU. At the end of 20213, the European Parliament approved by a large majority the European Media Freedom Law, which obliges States to protect the independence of the media and prohibits any form of intervention in editorial decisions. From Brussels they point out that “the authorities will be prohibited from pressuring journalists and editors to disclose their sources: they will not be able to arrest them, sanction them, search their offices or install intrusive surveillance programs on their electronic devices.”

“Journalists will have to be informed that they have been subject to surveillance and will be able to object in court. Editorial independence of public media To prevent political use of public media, their directors and board members must be selected through transparent and non-discriminatory procedures for sufficiently long mandates,” they add. Moncloa seems to ignore the demands of Brussels and is considering regulating the press, which would almost certainly imply a limitation on the Spanish press.