The president of the Spanish government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, has called the list of journalists prepared by the Communication Office of the Ministry of the Interior “very unfortunate,” which he “was unaware of,” according to his statement, and has shown his “respect” for the “autonomy and independence” of the media.
“I find it a very unfortunate document, I cannot say more. What I can guarantee to you, to the journalists and, of course, to the workers of the media is that from the government of Spain we respect the autonomy and independence, as it cannot be otherwise, of the media,” Sánchez stated this Wednesday in an interview on TVE, reported by Europa Press.
The head of the Executive clarified that he “was unaware” of the existence of this list although he specified that it was an “internal working document” prepared by the communication office of the Ministry of the Interior. In any case, he insisted that he finds it “inappropriate.”
However, he regretted that they are accused “of things that the opposition does when it has the chance” such as “threats to crush journalists or close media outlets or to point out workers” who “in the legitimate exercise of their functions and their capacity for analysis or their way of seeing life, defend one political position or another.”
For Sánchez, that “diversity of opinions is reflected in certain media” but not “in other public media governed by the right.” “That is what shows who believes or not in freedom of the press,” he asserted.
The Ministry of the Interior apologized this Tuesday for the content of the dossier prepared by its Communication Office with a list of journalists and assured that the purpose of the document is “consultative.”
The department led by Fernando Grande-Marlaska has conveyed its apologies to the professionals “who may have felt offended” both by the content of the document and by “some of the assessments made.”
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The Interior has emphasized that it is a document of “internal nature,” prepared in February 2024 by the Communication Office with a “consultative purpose and with no intention to establish censorship, restriction or any limit to the exercise of journalists and the media they work for.”
Furthermore, it has assured that this dossier in no case has conditioned the work of the Communication Office towards the journalists and political analysts mentioned, “as can be seen in the time elapsed since the preparation of this document, more than two and a half years ago.”
In this regard, the Ministry has defended that the Communication Office attends to the media daily “with professionalism and the utmost rigor possible, without making any distinctions and with full respect for freedom of the press and informational pluralism.”
During a press conference from Ceuta, Fernando Grande-Marlaska justified the preparation of the list of journalists as an “internal working document” which, he said, had no “improper purpose.”
Thus, he stated that “in no way” does the Ministry “make distinctions either between media or between journalists when providing information and responding to any request.”
The Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE) and the Association of Journalists of Madrid (APM) have expressed “their strongest condemnation” of the preparation of a document that “ideologically classifies dozens of information professionals” by the Communication Office of the Ministry of the Interior, between late 2023 and 2024.
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