Illa scolds TV3 for having given a voice to anti-vaxxers in Ramon Pellicer's program

It is not usual for a president of the Generalitat to publicly criticize TV3, but Sunday's Vèrtex program prompted a tweet from Salvador Illa with unusually harsh terms: “Giving a voice to the anti-vaccine discourse from a public television station is an irresponsibility. In a context of growing misinformation, public media have a duty to report with rigor and not to amplify messages that put public health at risk. Our complaint and our rejection have already been conveyed to those responsible for 3Cat”.

The person who was Minister of Health during the pandemic was referring to a short video of this format presented by Ramon Pellicer in which a couple who had decided not to vaccinate their children were interviewed, and now that they were adults, they had decided to do the same with theirs. The clip served as an introduction to a debate table that included two people unequivocally positioned in favor of vaccines: Judit Vall, professor of applied economics at the UB and president of the Catalan Society of Economics, and Gemma Moncunill, director of the research group at the CaixaResearch Institute.

The two witnesses, on the other hand, maintained without any evidence that the side effects of vaccines are worse than the benefits (which have indeed been scientifically proven). The reporter asked them if sending such a message could be dangerous, but they limited themselves to saying that people should read more and prescribed, among other things, hugging and smiling to help the body stay healthy with positive thoughts. In this sense, the program made a brief presentation in the controversial clip in which it recalled that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccinations have saved 150 million lives in the last half century. Ironically, if this disclaimer was meant to be a vaccine against criticism of the program, it did not work.

TV3 sources have defended the ability to collect testimonies of all kinds as a public and independent media outlet, and they point out that these voices were prioritized with journalistic criteria: the video lasted three and a half minutes and the subsequent debate with scientists, half an hour. In any case, and to prevent it from being used out of context, the message on X and the clip that could be viewed independently on the 3Cat platform have been deleted.

It so happens that this couple had already been interviewed during prime time by Ricard Ustrell on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio. That broadcast, however, did not motivate any response on social media from either Salvador Illa or his Government cabinet. The audio remains available as isolated content.

Vèrtex is the new major format for TV3 on Sundays and, for the moment, has had irregular performance in terms of audience. The show debuted with a modest 10.3% audience share and 133,000 viewers, but in the second episode it improved, reaching 189,000 followers and a 14.7% share. However, in this Sunday's broadcast—before a holiday—it could barely manage a 5.6% share and was surpassed by the film Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, on La 1; the reality show Supervivientes: Conexión Honduras,on Telecinco; the series El secreto, on Antena 3, and Cuarto Milenio, on Cuatro.