The right to information and the right to privacy

Josep Visa Nasarre sends me a voice message while still a digital subscriber, announcing that he will cancel his subscription next month, among other grievances, explaining: "One of the things that makes me cancel my subscription is a news story like the one that came out saying that the player Iniesta has a problem with a complaint from the Portuguese criminal. And, especially if he's not Spanish or Catalan, but an immigrant, they never use all the full names."

Ignasi Aragay, deputy director of the ARA, explains that, while everyone is equal before the law, "in the case of public figures, we understand that the right to information prevails over the right to privacy. In the case of anonymous citizens, we consider that the right to privacy prevails."

I have asked Benet Salellas for his opinion on this matter, which he knows well from his legal practice and his legal essays, such as the titles I accuse. The defense in political trials (Pagès Editors, 2019) and the recent Power on wait (Tigre de Paper, 2024), about Operation Garzón, the arrests of Catalan separatists following the Olympic Games. Salellas has participated in numerous high-profile cases, such as the defense of Jordi Cuixart, president of Òmnium Cultural, in the Catalan independence trial, and currently the defense of Santos Cerdán, former secretary of organization of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), who has just been released from prison. He also served as a member of parliament in the 2015 legislature.

This is the reflection that Benet Salellas conveys to us:

"The issue of publishing the data of detainees and those under investigation is always a thorny one, because it involves information about criminal proceedings that are in their very early stages. The right to privacy in these situations is therefore reinforced by the presumption of innocence, which acts as a criterion that advises protecting identifying data."

However, when the information concerns a public figure, Salellas continues, the need to publish their identity may outweigh the public interest. Public figures generally operate in a different context regarding the level of protection afforded to their personal rights. Just as they do not enjoy the same right to their own image as an anonymous citizen, they are also not as protected in other aspects of their private lives. The decision to become a public figure is a voluntary one, made by the individual, who consciously exposes themselves and thus raises certain protective barriers inherent in anonymity. This relaxation of privacy protections operates at all levels. If they are linked to a legal proceeding of some significance, this becomes newsworthy. And it is newsworthy because the person under investigation is the public figure. Therefore, the jurist concludes, it is common to report on these matters and even to disclose specific details of these legal proceedings. This would be unthinkable in cases involving anonymous citizens. It is the status of being a public figure that justifies the media interest, and not the other way around.

Journalism—not only the ARA, but also the Anglo-Saxon press that we so often use as a reference—applies the criteria reasoned by both Deputy Director Aragay and lawyer Salellas in cases where the right to information prevails over the right to privacy; the conflict between Articles 18 and 20 of the Constitution has accumulated a wealth of case law. I have therefore taken Josep Visa's complaint into consideration, giving it space in this section, because the issue warrants it. I have published his complaint in its entirety, which contains an assessment as controversial as the potential relationship between crime and immigration, and which, in this Ombudsman's opinion, should be avoided. However, I believe it is unwise to condition our response on not arguing about the fame factor when, precisely, the fame factor, and not origin, is the crux of the matter.

The journalistic traffic light

Traffic lights date back to 1869, and the first ones in Barcelona were installed in 1929 at the intersection of Balmes and Provença, due, like so many other urban improvements, to the Universal Exposition. As far as I know, the first traffic light reported in Catalan newspapers was the one used for the redesign of... The Vanguard (3/10/1989), work by Milton Glaser, famous for the "And I love NYThus began the graphic metaphor of a positive, negative, or neutral assessment of a figure connected to a news story, to which the reader was referred on the corresponding page. I have paused to consider several such "traffic lights" in the history of journalism and have observed that they are proportionally as ephemeral as traffic lights. The Vanguard It was for the Minister of Transport José Barrionuevo, who eventually went to jail for one of the most red-light stories of Spanish democracy: the GAL (Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups).

We therefore assign journalistic traffic lights their fungible value. The traffic light, whose etymology is embedded in the Greek root "sema," the mother of all semantics, is a way of capturing readers' attention for the article they direct, bypassing, albeit indirectly and without malicious intent, the code of ethics that prescribes not mixing information and opinion.

Reader Antoni Morell Mora points out that, in the newspaper of the 12th of this month, "one of the protagonists [of the green light] is Mr. Rafael Louzán, president of the RFEF [Royal Spanish Football Federation]," when "the content of the news story doesn't portray him in a very positive light." He concludes by asking: "Is this correct? Is the color of the traffic light independent of the meaning of the news story? Does the color of the traffic light tell us something else?"

Deputy Director Ignasi Aragay responds to the questions again: "Indeed, this traffic light should have clearly been red. It's a mistake. Thank you to the reader for pointing it out. The pages go through several revisions. In this case, it's clear that it didn't work. The traffic lights are editorial in nature, and we decide on them every day – the editorial."

The Ombudsman's conclusion is that the traffic light, a section with significant visual impact—I would even say intrinsically visual, given its semantically charged colors—must be programmed with great care... lest there be a traffic accident. If it's red, care must be taken not to violate the presumption of innocence—the topic discussed above—and if it's green, to avoid excessive sympathy. In this case, a green light on a red light doesn't harm anyone beyond a small measure of our own professionalism, which reader Morell has pointed out to us and should spur us not only to write well but also to revise more effectively.

Given that next week, on the 28th, Friday, ARA will be fifteen years old, I emphasize that its founding manifesto proclaims that "the newspaper belongs to those who make it, but also to those who read it," an inspiration very much in keeping with the spirit of this section.

The Reader's Advocate pays attention to doubts, suggestions, criticisms, and complaints about the newspaper's content in its digital and print editions, and ensures that the handling of information is in accordance with the codes of ethics.

By contact the Reader's Advocate You can send an email to eldefensor@ara.cat or record a message of no more than one minute to the WhatsApp number 653784787. In all cases, identification with name, surname and ID number is required.