Skeptical about the protection of professional secrecy

The central government has announced with great fanfare that it will promote a law to guarantee journalists' right to professional secrecy. Well, when he was killed, they accepted it. Professional secrecy has been recognized since 1978, since the Constitution, in Section D of Article 20.1, recognizes the right "to freely communicate or receive truthful information by any means of dissemination" and states that "the law shall regulate the right to the conscience clause and professional secrecy, in the exercise of these freedoms." The problem is that the giant medal of the magical Andreu that Pedro Sánchez is wearing doesn't manage to hide the suspicions. The press release warns that there will be exceptions to these intolerable intrusions "when they are the only means to avoid serious and imminent harm to life, physical integrity, or security, or risks to national security or the constitutional system." It's not too difficult to unravel the legalistic verbiage by understanding that the State is reserving the right to define these exceptions. All the democratic abuses that occurred during the Trial, with the illegal wiretapping and spying on journalists, for example, could be repeated in the name of this abstract protection of the constitutional system.

The right to professional secrecy is a pillar of journalism, and when it has not been respected in Spain, it has not been so much due to a lack of legal development in a law as to the glaring deficiencies of police bodies when they miss the mark on democratic hygiene. Without a profound cultural shift among those who wield the power of institutional violence, it will be difficult to make further progress in protecting sources. Forward with the new legal texts in the Official State Gazette, but this right is fought for in police stations, which for journalists are still the realm of arbitrariness.