Javier Ruiz leaves TVE to be editorial director of the new television La7

BarcelonaIt had been a rumor for weeks and this Friday it has been confirmed. Javier Ruiz signs for the new television La7 and will be its editorial director. "This is officiating one's own funeral," he joked a few minutes before three in the afternoon, in what will have been the last installment of the program Mañaneros under his leadership. The journalist took the opportunity to say that "there is a plague of journalism falsification and there is a plague of truth falsification. And to turn neighbors into traitors and to turn those who are different into threats. [...] It has never been so important to be connected, to seek information." The message could be understood as a small spot from public television for the new channel that will be born, with a progressive orientation and very focused on information and political debate. Seven minutes later, the social media accounts of the new medium launched a message from Ruiz confirming his new destination.

La7 will premiere on November 5 with an initial investment of 25 million euros, a very small amount when compared to that of a generalist channel. In fact, doubts about whether a state-level project with such shallow pockets could be viable in the streaming era were the reason why the president of Prisa, Joseph Oughourlian, ended up purging the executives and journalists who, from within the company, had been shaping this project, when it was still in the tender phase, but assuming that their ideological proximity to Moncloa would tip the scales in their favor.

José Miguel Contreras is the main ideologue and promoter of the project. Founder of Globomedia and La Sexta, and former content director of Prisa Media, he has also been the main informal advisor on communication matters to Pedro Sánchez. The company has the following partners (or their companies) as main shareholders: Andrés Varela Entrecanales, administrator of the company and key industrial partner (also co-founder of Globomedia and former director of Prisa), businessman Diego Prieto, and José Luis Manzano, president of Integra Capital and shareholder of the Argentine group Telefé.

The network has not yet announced its lineup, nor if Ruiz will present any program, although it is foreseeable that he will. There is a content director, Daniel Fernández Muñoz, who precisely in his previous stage had been one of the key pieces of Mañaneros 360. His departure, in fact, is what fueled the rumors that the presenter of the program could soon move to this new television.