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

It is not common 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 anti-vaccine discourse from a public television station is irresponsible. In a context of growing disinformation, 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 was 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 featuring 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 using journalistic criteria: the video lasted three and a half minutes and the subsequent debate with scientists lasted 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 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 trigger 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 from TV3 for Sundays and, for the moment, it has had an irregular performance in terms of audience. The show debuted with a discreet 10.3% audience share and 133,000 viewers, but in the second episode it improved, reaching 189,000 followers and 14.7%. On the other hand, in this Sunday's broadcast –before a public 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.

Beyond the critical tweet on social media by Salvador Illa, the Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, referred to the matter in the press conference following the executive council meeting. "It is serious that in a matter of public health and, therefore, very sensitive, a format has been chosen that should always be linked to science and scientific evidence," she said, and criticized that "messages or reflections not scientifically accredited can be introduced." "After the experience lived with covid, we are all very aware that messages in this area must have a very important scientific basis. It is an issue that we cannot afford, and even less so from a public TV station," she added. Paneque assured that the Government has sent a letter to the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia regarding this issue.