The strange boycott of the Madrid government delegation to La Séptima

The CEO of La Séptima, Miguel Ángel Contreras, presented this new free-to-air channel and made an effort to distance himself from the notion that it is a television station to the greater glory of Pedro Sánchez. But shortly after the informative breakfast in which he participated, the government delegation in Madrid issued a tweet that included statements from the executive such as: “In the realm of the progressive world, there is an absolute and total void right now.” It was nothing short of a missile against La Sexta, the channel he co-founded two decades ago and which is supposed to be Atresmedia’s left-wing television station. (Apart from also ignoring La1, whose political leaning I assume there is no need to detail). But what is surprising is that an institutional account would echo it, because the statements are not from the government delegate, but from a private investor trying his luck in the difficult television business dominated by the duopoly giants (more than half of the audience and four-fifths of the advertising).

The tweet states that the event featured “the presence of the government delegate,” but he was clearly not the protagonist. It is amusing that Contreras strives to shake off the idea that this television station will be more 'Sanchista' than Sánchez himself and, in parallel, that a government delegation gives ammunition to his critics with tweets that break the expected neutrality. It is a detail, but it speaks to us of how media entrenchment has also led to the unashamed submission of institutions to mundane political squabbles. It is true that the television balance is skewed, and significantly so, to the right. The attempts to straighten the scales seem harsh and clumsy to me, but they generate a curiosity: will they allow the left to capitalize on a polarization that, as of now, seems to favor the most extreme right?