The Congress already has a code of conduct that will allow sanctioning the extreme right agitators who have boycotten the work of journalists for years. The reform of the regulation promoted by the parliamentary groups of the investiture block has received the final approval on Tuesday. The lower house table now has to develop the new regulation but the spirit of the progressive majority is that it is in full functioning for the start of the new parliamentary course.
The reform of the regulation has come forward with 177 votes in favor. They have only voted against the PP, Vox and Union of the Navarrese people, 171 deputies. The party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and especially the formation of Santiago Abascal have tried from the first moment torpedo this initiative designed precisely to avoid the behaviors of the ultras that continuously burst the press conferences in Congress, they point to journalists who criticize and threaten and insult those who lie to them face. They are activists linked to pseudomedians such as EDATV or digital journalist who camouflage the ideology of the extreme right under alleged “uncomfortable questions.”
The coexistence in Congress has been getting worse as these agitators have turned their interruptions into routine. Just a few weeks ago, one of them crossed the security step without the relevant accreditation and recorded in areas where it is forbidden to do it with total impunity, given the passivity of the police officers who were at that time.
Until now, the lower house had shielded in the absence of specific regulations to avoid measures. At the end of February, dozens of media professionals from any ideology or editorial line demonstrated to the gates of Congress to demand the implementation of measures that guarantee the development of their professional activity with full guarantees, as always happened until the granting of the accreditations to the agitators of the salary of these ultra portals.
“The journalists who work in Congress suffer disqualifications, insults and accusations by accredited people who work with us and do not respect elementary rules of coexistence. They even threaten us to publicize our homes,” said spokesmen of the Association of Parliamentary Journalists during the reading of a statement.
The protest of the journalists occurred a week after an event in the halls that served as a trigger. One of these people explicitly threatened a parliamentary journalist in the halls of the Chamber. “When I share it, you are going to shit,” he told him about a video that one his co -religionists had just uploaded to social networks to falsely accuse her of preventing her work. Hours later, he threatened to disseminate personal information from the homes of those journalists who planted him.
All that is what PP and Vox have protected this afternoon under the premise that this reform is an attempt to censors, as Deputy Carmen Navarro has said, which has lavished in words. “Today we are asked to legitimize the creation of a political police of public opinion. This reform goes from shielding a corrupt government. Whenever you lose democracy you win,” he said.
Jacobo González-Robatto, the deputy of the extreme right, has assured that the majority of the congress wants to “shut up the questions to be asked” and has defended his allies in the pseudomedians as brave that “do not fold to the PSOE” and that they do not accept “institutional advertising” in exchange for silence.
“They say they do not accept institutional advertising. If you have paid 400,000 turkeys in the Community of Madrid,” ERC spokesman Gabriel Rufián responded to him on the subsidies of the regional government to this type of portals. “People who have a YouTube channel,” he said.
The rest of the spokesmen of the investiture groups have also defended the reform. “They are the same ones that go on lists of the extreme right, who work in extreme right matches, who go to manifestations of the extreme right,” said EH Bildu spokesman Jon Iñarritu. “They are those who use a credential of journalists such as Corsican patent to try to spread the hatred, tension and persecution against those who consider different,” he insisted.
The deputy of the PNV Mikel Legarda has loaded against “the ways and ways of a few” not “for asking uncomfortable questions” but “for harassing, pointing out, threatening, hosting, bursting and boycotting press wheels, making hidden recordings or raising offices of deputies or deputies.” “It is necessary to address them without delay to end the impunity of those sedentic informants who not only bothers the deputies and deputies but to the journalists and accredited,” he said.
The general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, has noted however of the limits of a reform such as in front of the ultra -right. “Tomorrow the Popular Party will continue to finance with thousands and thousands of euros to the media where Vito Quiles works, from the Community of Madrid, from the Region of Murcia, from the Government of Aragon, of Castilla y León, the municipalities of Madrid or Seville. Tomorrow Vox will continue to hire for their electoral campaigns and tomorrow these media hitmen will have, having all the great television gatherings of this country to their service, as the man Public Espejo and Ana Rosa Quintana, while they are dedicated to criminalizing the hate about the most humble people in this country, ”he denounced.
“This reform does not limit the right to inform, it protects it. It provides for a very tasadso sanctioning regime, it is not an initiative of the government, but a formal request for associations of parliamentary journalists,” said the deputy of the PSOE Joaquín Martínez.
Very serious offenses and possibility of definitive expulsion
To avoid these situations, the groups wrote a proposal that has been relatively fast in Congress and that establishes a series of sanctions based on the infractions. There are slight, serious and very serious. The latter can lead to the suspension of the accreditation credential between three months and five years or even the definitive revocation of access to the camera.
Among the very serious offenses are respects of respect or courtesy rules in front of other people within the parliamentary enclosure and access zones. “A very serious infraction will be considered in any case to utter insults, disqualifications or attempt against the dignity of other people within the Chamber and in accesses to it,” says the new regulation.
They will also be very serious infractions “the recording of images or audios through the use of hidden devices or in the offices of the members of the camera and in the areas reserved for parliamentary groups and the recording of images or sounds without the authorization of the camera or outside the spaces enabled for it that contains personal data or violates the intimacy of people.”
Serious infractions will, for example, “the inclusion of false information in the application for the credential, the recording of images or audios without the authorization of the camera or outside the spaces enabled for this, access to reserved spaces, such as offices or meeting areas, of the parliamentary enclosure alien to those bounded for representatives of the media without the mandatory authorization”. Also “interrupting the order of the press conferences or other meetings of the Chamber members with the representatives of the media; the publication in media and social networks of images obtained against the applicable regulations; any other behaviors that harm the activity of the Chamber or the work of other representatives of the media.”
As minor infractions: the omission of information required in the application for the credential and access to common spaces of the parliamentary enclosure outside those bounded for representatives of the media without the mandatory authorization.
