The Supreme Court has confirmed that the Catalan regional television, TV3, violated the principles of neutrality and political pluralism by fully broadcasting the independence demonstration held in Madrid on March 16, 2019 and a documentary favorable to the
process
on April 9 of the same anus.
Both programs were broadcast when the general elections of April 28, 2019 were already called, and were the object of reproach by the Central Electoral Board.
The highest electoral authority ordered the opening of a sanctioning file against those responsible for the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation, the public company that includes TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio, and forced the non-secessionist formations to be compensated with equivalent airtime before those elections.
The Corporation, chaired by Núria Llorach, appealed the sanctioning agreement of the Electoral Board before the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court.
In a sentence notified yesterday, the judicial body has flatly rejected the appeal of the media group dependent on the Generalitat.
The high court recalls that the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation, despite having the legal form of a public limited company, is a public entity that must carry out its activity with "submission to the law" and "full objectivity exclusively serving the general interest, of everyone's ”.
And that during the electoral process this requirement is accentuated: "When elections are called, you must avoid any show of deference or preference, or disapproval or disfavour towards one or more of the candidates in the running," says the sentence, which interprets Article 66 of the Organic Law of General Electoral Regime (LOREG).
On March 16, 2019, TV3 broadcast in its entirety, for more than two hours, the demonstration in favor of self-determination called in Madrid by the independentist entities Assemblea Nacional Catalana and Òmnium Cultural, and which was attended by tens of thousands of people.
The Supreme Court appreciates that the broadcast had an "electoral impact" because it featured leaders or exponents of the pro-independence parties that attended the 28-A elections.
The sentence recognizes that they were also political guests of another sign, but that their presence was on the occasion of the demonstration, so that through their participation what was achieved was to maintain the message of the promoters of the march.
TV3, the ruling affirms, "offered a qualified dissemination - by time and by the form of the broadcast and by the channel - of political-electoral messages defended by some candidates to which the others did not have access."
This way of acting "cannot be in accordance with informational neutrality or with respect for political pluralism and creates inequality among those who run for the elections due to the advantage it provides to those who benefit from such treatment."
“The freedom to communicate truthful information does not justify going further and incurring the loss of the required neutrality.
It is not an unlimited right and even less so if the person who wants to enforce it is a public entity, especially obliged to maintain its objectivity, ”recalls the ruling, on which Judge Pablo Lucas has been a speaker.
The Central Electoral Board and the Supreme Court have already ruled in similar terms before other TV3 broadcasts of secessionist mobilizations during the electoral period, such as the demonstration held in Brussels on December 7, 2017, prior to the regional elections of December 21, that year, or that of the Day of September 11, 2015, prior to the regional elections of the 25th of the same month.
As for the documentary
Un procés dins el procés
, broadcast within the
Sense Ficció
program
on April 9, 2019 and which showed how the relatives of politicians imprisoned by the illegal referendum and the declaration of independence of October 2017 managed their feelings, the Supreme also appreciates that it could influence the elections.
"The documentary, in addition to being interesting, projects an image that favors such people and the ideas they defend, which would not be relevant if they were not essentially the same as those advocated by certain political forces concurrent to the elections that would be held a few weeks later" , says the sentence.
The court emphasizes that the Corporation "has not explained" why it chose that date, in the middle of the electoral campaign, to broadcast that documentary.
In addition, it points out that the public body's own resource, arguing that the other non-independence contenders could not be compensated with airtime because they did not have relatives in prison “draws a dividing line between those who, it says, suffer that separation and others".
"The message transmitted could not be clearer or that it favored some electoral options to the detriment of others and thus created a situation of inequality," affirms the Supreme Court, which imposes on the Corporation the payment of the costs of the process, 4,000 euros.