José Antonio Álvarez Gundín, news director of Telemadrid, has refused to appear in the regional Assembly to explain how public television, which in April broadcast a hoax about the wife of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, verifies the news. His decision, communicated to the Chamber on May 7, according to an email accessed by EL PAÍS, comes at a particularly delicate moment for the company. Telemadrid had to rectify in April that news about Begoña Gómez. The Central Electoral Board has just ruled that a sanctioning file must be opened against the company for using the expression “that Sánchez” which, in its opinion, endangers the information neutrality of the entity. And to that is added that the latest legal reform sponsored by the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso will allow it to cement its control of public television and radio with the appointment of a new director before july.
It is April 9 and, on the Telemadrid news, the presenter looks at the camera to say the following: “In this context, again rectify information given this weekend by Telemadrid. In Sunday’s news we echoed information from the newspaper The Objective about a Government subsidy in the name of Begoña Gómez Fernández, who we identify as President Sánchez’s wife. However, Telemadrid has not been able to prove this point or that the beneficiary has any relationship with the President of the Government.” In fact, the Begoña Gómez who had received the subsidy was, in reality, a Cantabrian businesswoman.
He mea culpa 24 seconds causes a great stir in the regional Assembly, immersed at that moment in the election of the members of the board of directors. Time and time again, all of them are asked about what happened by the left-wing opposition. Y Más Madrid goes one step further: it decides to request the appearance of Gundín as the head of the news and under the generic request that he come to “report on the information verification mechanisms used by the Radio Televisión Madrid information services.”
“In response to your kind invitation, I inform you that I cannot accept it, given that all questions regarding this company are answered by its Provisional Administrator,” responds Gundín, former deputy director of The reason and former news director of RTVE. Everything remains, therefore, in the hands of José Antonio Sánchez, summoned to appear in the Assembly this Tuesday.
“The one who has to appear is the Provisional Administrator,” argues a company spokesperson in reference to Sánchez, who was appointed in 2021 by Ayuso to this newly created position thanks to the endorsement of a career that includes having directed RTVE in times of the presidency of Mariano Rajoy, having confessed to being a PP voter, and appearing in The Bárcenas Papers. “It is the most appropriate thing, because he is responsible,” she adds.
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Gundín has no obligation to appear before the Assembly. This only happens with the general director of Telemadrid, or, where appropriate, the provisional administrator, and the president of the Board of Directors. The rest of the company’s directors are summoned by article 211, like other representatives of civil society, and can decline the invitation.
“The head of Telemadrid’s news reports refuses to show his face,” laments Pablo Padilla, from Más Madrid. “Despite the accumulation of scandals and examples of the spread of hoaxes, Mr. Gundín remains unaccountable before the Madrid Assembly,” he continues. “Telemadrid has become another node in the network of disinformation media that devastates the media landscape and endangers coexistence and democratic values,” he insists. And he thinks: “Ayuso has managed to drag public radio and television to levels of manipulation that we have not remembered since the times of Aguirre, turning Telemadrid into a media outlet that is dedicated to praising the figure of Ayuso while attacking and defaming the opposition and the government of Spain”.
The interest of the president’s team in controlling public television comes from afar. “I am the only president who has a television that is critical of her,” Ayuso even said in 2020, when an interview in The world He revealed his confrontation with the management of the chain that he had inherited from the Government of Cristina Cifuentes. The baroness was then governing with Ciudadanos, whose spokespersons publicly expressed their fear that she wanted to convert public television into Tele-Ayuso. These suspicions were confirmed when the conservative leader managed to govern alone, after the 2021 elections. Since then, she has sponsored three reforms to the law that regulates public radio and television in Madrid. As a result of the latter, Ayuso will strengthen her influence in the company before July, when the new CEO is elected.
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