The censorship of TV3 that makes you wrinkle your nose
This week Jordi Basté denounced, in his opening segment of El món a RAC1, the manipulation of the text of the play Dones de ràdio which was broadcast on Monday evening on TV3. At the beginning of the performance, the character of Rosa, played by actress Àngels Gonyalons, mentions that she works at RAC1. Basté's team, knowing the public television's historical reservations regarding the rival station, checked whether that reference to RAC1 had been respected. And they hit the mark. Gonyalons' intervention was mutilated. At the time of writing this article, the censored version can still be found on the 3Cat platform. If you retrieve it, you will be able to observe how, at the beginning of the play, just after Gonyalons' character explains that she hosts a radio program on one of the country's main stations, there is a cutaway shot of actress Sara Diego listening to her colleague that serves to make the cut go unnoticed.
The blunder has led to a textbook Streisand effect. If they had not manipulated the recording, the audience wouldn't even remember the mention of RAC1. The news, on the other hand, leaves a very serious stain on their record. It may seem like an inconsequential anecdote, because it is only about removing the name of a station. But the gesture has many implications. The audacity to mutilate the text of a play and an actress's work already demonstrates a worrying impunity. If a public television station does not respect artistic creation and authorship, it reveals an absolute lack of sensitivity towards culture. And this is no anecdote; it brings out a certain professional disposition.
The president of the CCMA, Rosa Romà, promised to open an investigation and assured that they knew nothing about the cutting of the phrase. The internal work to find out should not take more than half an hour, but nothing more has been heard about this matter. Once again, the 'Corpo' has shown a lack of transparency, hoping that the news will be forgotten, and their embarrassment too. A classic when it comes to managing crises. TV3 censors a theatrical text and hides it.
The most worrying thing is that, if to avoid the fleeting mention of RAC1 in a play they take such a liberty, it is inevitable to wonder what they do in more delicate cases or with more relevant information. The management of a public media outlet has many economic and political implications. There are pressures and control mechanisms must be passed. The silence of the television professionals is also surprising. This clumsy artifice puts the entity under suspicion and in a position of weakness. It entails a logical loss of trust and credibility. It highlights what strategies they are willing to use in the face of circumstances that they find uncomfortable. If the word "RAC1" makes the knees of the higher spheres of the entity tremble, what happens with all the information and political pressures? How do they face editorial lines and the content of the news?
