The start of the trial against Daniel Sancho for the death and dismemberment of the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta in Thailand has unleashed an impressive media display despite the fact that the process is being held behind closed doors. Speculation surrounding the nature of the defendant's relationship with the victim has sparked audience interest. They have also done so because he is the son of a very famous actor in our country, Rodolfo Sancho, and grandson of an even more famous one, Sancho Gracia, and that he faces a foreign penal code that contemplates the death penalty. In these first days of the judicial process, HBO Max has launched an exclusive interview with Rodolfo Sancho and Darling Arrieta, sister of the murdered man, has offered exclusive statements for Telecinco. In this type of news coverage, the protection of honor, privacy and one's own image is a fundamental right included in the Constitution, which collides with that of information and freedom of expression. “In recent years, jurisprudence leans more in favor of the latter,” analyzes Gonzalo León, a lawyer specializing in Criminal Law at the Vilches Abogados law firm.
Daniel Sancho's family requested precautionary measures against Mediaset last November, but, weeks later, the court denied the request "among other reasons because there was no necessary urgency," León points out. The expert considers that, despite “how excessive and even morbid” the media coverage surrounding this case may be, he has hardly seen any television moments that could be the subject of a complaint. Although he does believe that specific content “could have a legal profile.” This is a video with the reconstruction of the alleged murder that includes the two existing versions, that of the prosecution and that of the defense. Telecinco broadcast the recording this weekend on the afternoon program
Fiesta
, produced by Unicorn Content, the company of which Ana Rosa Quintana is president and main shareholder. According to León's particular professional criteria, “this broadcast exceeds the limits of freedom of information,” he assures.
The lawyer considers it “complicated” to determine whether the content violates Sancho's dignity. “We would have to pay attention to the casuistry,” he explains, although he is struck by the fact that those responsible for this audiovisual piece “have shown special effort in finding actors who resemble those involved instead of using other types of more generic visual resources, which give less room for mistakes on the part of the viewer”, as happens in other television spaces that cover information about events. “It is not necessary to resort to actors to communicate the content, nor for the public to understand the information surrounding the written tax or defense report,” he believes. Furthermore, he continues, “this broadcast could also be harmful and painful for the victim's family.”
“We are used to the audiovisual industry recapitulating in various formats, documentaries and even fiction series,” says León. “But it usually happens after a trial has taken place. This has been the case with the crime committed by the Urban Police and with the Asunta case. But, in this case, this type of reconstructions and content are being issued on the fly, with the trial having barely begun,” highlights the lawyer. Therefore, “the risk of this recreation broadcast on Telecinco is that it shows two biased versions, two legal realities that at the moment are not proven facts, which can be easily shared on social networks or other media edited and taken out of context,” points out the lawyer.
Even if relatives of Sancho and Arrieta had received financial compensation for their television appearances and, therefore, have participated and profited from the media coverage surrounding the case, the spokesperson for Vilches Abogados believes that it would not harm them. from a legal point of view if, in the future, one of the two parties decides to take legal action for some of the content offered by the media.
In Rodolfo Sancho's statements to HBO Max in the first episode of a non-fiction series produced by Cuarzo Producciones (Banijay Iberia), the actor mentions different crimes attributed to Edwin Arrieta, such as death threats against his son and his family and a attempted sexual assault. But Daniel Sancho's father "does not formulate it as an accusation, but echoes the words that his son has transmitted to him," says León, who finds it difficult to attribute a possible crime of slander in that interview.
Self-regulation of the media
The trial for the Sancho case is being held in Thailand, “but let's remember what happened with Dolores Vázquez,” says Hugo Aznar, doctor of Philosophy and professor of Communication Ethics at the CEU Cardenal Herrera University of Valencia. The distorted overexposure of her image in the media contaminated a popular jury, which ended up convicting her of a murder that she had not committed. “It is a clear example of how the media can implicitly establish guilt and innocence,” Aznar said in a telephone conversation on Tuesday. “They are trials that, due to their own dynamics, unleash all passions, as happened with Vázquez in the case of Rocío Wanninkhof, with the murder of Diana Quer and the crime of Alcàsser.”
For Aznar, the self-regulation of the media in this type of coverage involves mainly “respecting the presumption of innocence, which is fundamental, as well as respect for privacy, especially that of family members,” he says while recalling that “in the Arny case, the media that rewarded the sources encouraged slander.”
In recent years, Mediaset España has been sentenced to pay various public figures compensation ranging from 50,000 euros (to the writer Lucía Etxebarría, for interference with privacy) to 220,000 euros (to one of the daughters of Jesulín de Ubrique , Julia Janeiro, for illegitimate interference in her honor). The range is so wide because, unlike other situations, such as a traffic accident, where there is a report of physical injuries, the damage in this type of crime is psychological "and, therefore, more abstract and subject to interpretation" , points out Gonzalo León, from Vilches Abogados.
Deterrent effects
As sanctions can only be established by a legal body, Hugo Aznar considers that “increasing the amounts of the penalties would help them have a deterrent effect.” In some cases, it has been the audience and not the media who have regulated the coverage of this type of information. This is what happened with the case of
La noria
, in 2011. Mediaset was forced to cancel what was one of its most successful programs, presented by Jordi González. In it, an interview was broadcast with the mother of El cuco, one of those involved in the death of Marta del Castillo. A campaign started on the Internet managed to get advertisers to withdraw advertising from the program. But, as Aznar recalls, the judge initially charged Pablo Herreros, writer of the blog that promoted the boycott, with a possible crime of threats and coercion. “It is a clear case in which the judge put the company's right to obtain an economic benefit first,” recalls the expert.
Aznar is one of the 13 members of the Arbitration, Complaints and Ethics of Journalism Commission, of the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE). This commission is an ethical body of the journalistic profession based on self-regulation. Handles claims for possible violation of compliance with the Professional Association's Code of Ethics. Therefore, it acts as a moral authority granted by the press associations and the journalists affiliated with them and has no sanctioning capacity. Furthermore, if during the processing of a deontological file, the issue discussed were in judicial instances, the processing would be suspended pending the judicial resolution, the organization explains.
One of the advantages of these complaints “is that they are free and, therefore, they are equal to all people regardless of their economic resources,” says Aznar. But the doctor of Philosophy would like this self-regulatory body “to be better known,” so that more people resort to it, and that it has more media weight, “because these resolutions sting the serious media and they try to avoid them.”