Political tension and violence against journalists

BarcelonaOne of the best indicators to know if a political crisis is turning into social tension are the episodes of violence or intimidation against journalists. In the case of the Ceuta crisis, with exacerbated Spanish nationalism, the hatred against Pedro Sánchez extends to those media outlets identified as close to the Spanish government. Thus, for example, this Wednesday a TVE journalist who was covering the demonstration at Cibeles, in Madrid, in favor of Ceuta (and against Sánchez) had to be protected by the National Police when the attendees shouted at him and tried to take his microphone.

One of those having a particularly hard time is the TVE correspondent in Ceuta, Jesús Navarro, who has also been heckled on several occasions, although he prefers to downplay it and commented to Xabier Fortes that those who do so are a minority.

It is curious, the hatred against RTVE on the part of the right, since its journalists, unlike those of private media, are people who have had to pass tests to obtain their position. I am talking, obviously, about those who are part of the newsroom, it is another matter for those in production company programs. And in all cases, they are workers, often with precarious salaries. That is why turning them into the enemy to be defeated is tremendously unfair.

However, hatred of journalists has become a classic of all political crises, and in some cases a structural pillar of the strategy of some political leaders, such as Donald Trump and many populist movements, both left and right. Curiously, those who heckle journalists are surely the first to applaud pseudo-journalists like Vito Quiles or Iker Jiménez, from which we must infer that what bothers them is not so much the line of this or that medium as journalism itself.