PEDRO Sanchez has been likened to the fascist dictator General Franco amid a row over his controversial media transparency plan designed to crack down on ‘fake news’.
As part of his Action Plan for Democracy, Sanchez’s government has vowed to set up an independent ‘media registry’, managed by the National Securities Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), which will force newspapers and other media organisations to declare their owners and investors.
This, the prime minister hopes, will reduce ‘misinformation’ and political ‘mudslinging’, citing as an example what he describes as the targeted harassment of his wife Begoña Gomez over alleged ‘influence peddling’ in relation to government contracts, which led to an unprecedented five days of reflection in April where Sanchez weighed up whether to stay on or resign.
That same month, a news website called The Objective published an article claiming that Begoña Gomez had received a government subsidy – in fact, the website, which is partly funded by revenue from city and regional governments headed by right wing parties, had mistaken the prime minister’s wife for a different woman.
Nevertheless, the article was presented to court by Manos Limpias, a trade union with far-right links, as evidence for the criminal investigation against Sanchez’’s wife, which remains ongoing.
However, in response, the conservative Partido Popular (PP) opposition and far-right Vox have accused Sanchez of curbing media freedom and threatening freedom of speech.
Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, the leader of the PP, said: “Censorship and persecution of anyone who dares to criticise him – we haven’t seen anything like this since Franco”, referring to the hard-right dictator who ruled Spain for over three decades.
In a heated parliamentary debate, Feijoo accused Sanchez of organising ‘an offensive against judges, journalists and the media’ through his plan, which will have to be passed by Spain’s fragmented parliament, requiring the support of far-left Sumar and Basque and Catalan nationalists.
Sanchez defended his proposal, accusing the opposition of a ‘negative attitude to everything the government does’, irrespective of a plan’s individual merits.
He argued that revised legislation was required to conform to the EU’s new European Media Freedom Act, which aims to safeguard media independence.
As part of the new law, all media organisations will be required to present the sources of their advertising revenue annually ‘in a clear and accessible manner’.
The Law on Institutional Advertising will also be amended to include clauses on transparency, proportionality and non-discrimination ‘in the allocation of funds’, which will ‘prevent the financing of media that promote disinformation or fake news’.
The plan also includes a provision to better protect journalists and their sources, and the implementation of a European directive demanding the protection of reporters from ‘external harassment’ and ‘the abusive and unfounded demands they face on a daily basis for doing their job’.
Industry leaders have praised the ‘positive’ aspects of the proposed legislation, but argued the measures ‘need greater specificity’.
