By Isabella Vaughn and Jillian Argento
According to the Pew Research Center, only 31 percent of Spaniards trust mainstream news media. The demand for responsible, neutral journalism has increased in Spain within the last year due to controversial events surrounding the political conflict in Catalonia as well as civilian prosecutions relating to the freedom of expression.
That demand can’t be met, however, without access to information from the government.
Spain introduced the Transparency Law in 2013 and it went into effect in December 2014. The law is intended to make information more accessible to the people, but it remains limited.
Spain’s Transparency Law is ranked 80th out of the 110 countries with transparency laws in the world, according to the Global Right to Information Rating—an information program founded by Access Info Europe and the Centre for Law and Democracy to assess the strength of global transparency laws.
The law is not considered a fundamental right but an ordinary right, which means it is not protected to the ultimate degree and can be changed depending on how the passing of future legislature may affect it, according to the Right to Information Rating program.
The Spanish government has launched transparency websites to answer the call for expanded access to information. But some members of the media and the public are dissatisfied with the information available to them.
Only certain information is included on these sites while other information must be specifically requested.
Journalist Pilu Rubio works for El Intermedio, a satire news program on one of Spain’s top television networks, La Sexta. She says the process of requesting information from the government isn’t as smooth as it could be.
“It depends if the information will affect (the government) negatively,” Rubio said. “If you wish to obtain institutional and governmental information, you can get it pretty easily.
But if you wish to get information which is not demonstrated to be institutional, then it becomes a more difficult subject.”
Rubio adds accessing information that delves deeper into government finances, expenses, and projects can be a challenge.
The information requests are fulfilled by a government team and “a reply will be issued within 30 days,” according to Spanish newspaper El Pais. The average reply time varies widely among Spain’s autonomous regions. In Valencia, it takes up to 10 months to fulfill a request, according to the news outlet.
Limited transparency laws and unreliable information request fulfillment times create a distrust between the media and the people. But Spaniards, especially the millennial generation, are seeking out news.
Research shows young people are vested in getting news as 43 percent of Spanish adults get news from social media, with young people between the ages of 18 and 29 making up the majority of that percentage, according to Pew Research Center. Facebook is the most commonly used social network for news.
Despite Spanish young adults’ interest in news via social media, there’s an apparent lack of interest in news among millennials due to the limited range of perspectives represented in mainstream media. The younger generation doesn’t have a presence in Spanish media due to lack of job opportunities for young people.
Students seeking careers in journalism must earn a master’s degree in the field before having any kind of experience, according to Spanish journalism student Carolina Gomez. Without millennial representation in the mainstream media, young people don’t believe their perspectives are being represented properly causing less interest in seeking news that way.
Young Spaniards like Leeyla Maria, a jewelry store manager from Cordoba, express concern over the range of perspectives covered by news outlets. She fears those in control of media messages are causing more harm than good.
“When you have people with different agendas like in the media and politics, they use (information) as a weapon,” Maria said. “The information is very hurtful because it deceives the population.”
The distrust Maria shared is exemplary of attitudes towards government-funded public news organizations in Spain.
The Pew Research Center conducted in-depth surveys to understand Western European attitudes towards news media and politics in 2017. Adults from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Spain were surveyed. In all the countries, the public news organization was the most trusted except for Spain, where private news channel Antena 3 is most trusted.
In Spain, public media organizations tend to support whichever political party currently in power, according to Gomez. This bias puts private media organizations on the outskirts from receiving government support and accessing information. But Gomez still believes members of the media should prioritize producing work that meets journalistic standards and is informative.
“If you are telling a story, you cannot focus on one side,” Gomez said. “You have to open the view and try to show the whole reality. We have to show everything and then the (people) choose.”
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