The TVE that José Pablo López dreams

Approach the intentions of the corporation and the public television with which its president dreams, José Pablo LópezIt is complex. This journalist and lawyer, with charisma and at the same time strategist, knows better than anyone the operation of television. He saw Lasxta and thirteen TV, two private televisions, and was also in front for four years of Telemadrid (2017-2021), a public entity. «José Pablo López is a great manager, one of the best television managers that exists. The test is where he has worked has not done anything wrong, but surprises the ideological drift RTVE is taking. Prove not to have too many Ideological scruples When working for one or the other and I do not know if it is good or bad, ”says Leopoldo Abad, professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of Information Law at the CEU San Pablo University, who was also a professor of José Pablo.

The vocation of public television has always been to respond to a Public Service And for this, the news are key, informative that have been affected since September 2024 after the arrival of ‘La Revuelta’, when they were cut 15 minutes at night. Face Torrespaña It is something like battle against a dragon. Obtaining your blessing is not easy if you do not come from the house, as is the case of José Pablo López. Therefore, the informative part is one of the last blocks he has faced. The changes arrived last Februarywhen she chose Maribel Sánchez-Maroto as Director of Informative Content of RTVE and Jon Ariztimuño, with whom she worked together on Telemadrid (he as general director of the group and Ariztimuño as director of news) as director of the news of TVE.

From above

The workers of the InformativeS have always worked as the template of any television, newspaper or radio, where the different sections present their themes to the editors and sell them to work on them. However, internal sources of RTVE assure that for some time it is no longer: “At meetings, it is now the editors who tell the sections where they are to go and what they should focus on.” This change of course adds to the modification of the jairy by the subdirector. Fuentes recognize that it was impossible to see a deputy director of informative interfere in the creation or modification of Escleta … until now. “It is not uncommon to see a deputy director who enters to change the order of a ladder or modify a closure because it is not to his liking.” The intervention in the Information treatment by superiors it is somewhat more common than before.

Public television became A power weapon for governments for years and is not a novelty among house workers and among the spectators. The changes of the presenters in the informative as well as the management heads have rotated based on the changes of government. Sources confirm what many expected. «There will be changes in the news of all stripes, of course, it is not novelty and it is something that they want to promote, but they have not had time so far by the respect that Torrespaña gives and for the little time they have been in the direction and presidency ».

The visible face of information in RTVE, beyond the news, is Silvia Intxaurrondo in ‘The morning of the 1st. The journalist, who collected this week a PSOE prize in Madrid for her «Independent journalism»leads to this format since 2021. It is the set that Pedro Sánchez chose to do his first interview after the elections in July and is the place where he has paraded to ten government ministers only in January.

The Corporation has not only transformed the way of working and the pre -production of the news. Also the way of telling them. Fuentes ensure that those news that can harm the image of the government, such as Begoña Gómez, the woman Pedro Sánchez, or those news that may directly affect the president of the Government, avoid telling them from the set. “We are asked not to broadcast any news of that type from that space to prevent a substantive image from being put from the president of the Government, his wife or a minister like Ábalos, who is being investigated.” The incision of news of this caliber as well as all those that have to do with the State Attorney General, are in the point of view and try to pass as unnoticed as possible.

Activist entertainment

Four months are few to make an assessment on the direction of public television, but they have been enough to transform the 1 1, to sign faces at least controversial and propose formats and ways of making television never seen before seen on public television. The arrival of José Pablo López The presidency already brought with him a series of unwanted promises that had come to light and when he occupied the dispatch of content director. One of them was the arrival of the universe ‘Save me’ to TVE, which already dissipated when Lydia Lozano, Terelu Campos or Cocko Cortés arrived in ‘Mañaneros’, in September 2023. But this fact was confirmed after the signing of Sergio Calderón, one of the parents of the new ‘Save Me’ and former worker of The Osa Producciones (previous Studio manufacturers)as director of TVE, when López was already president, in December 2024. And in less than two months, the signing of Belén Esteban was already on the RTVE table for the afternoons of the 1 next to another former collaborator of the old Telecinco program, María Patiño. Aitor Albizua will be the presenter.

The commitment to this type of faces and in the way of making television adds to the interest that the corporation has shown in doing ‘Infoentretenimiento’, A hybrid genre between information and entertainment that confuses more than clarifies. «It is a genre that comes to replace information, is the spectacularization of information, yellowing and confusing information with opinion. It is raising opinion to the dominant reference category. This dissolution of the limits of journalistic genres is being used politically in an obvious way, ”says Francisco Serrano Oceja, a professor of journalism at the San Pablo CEU University. The use of sets such as ‘La Revuelta’ to refer to political issues, although they ensure that it is always from humor, such as corruption only of the political right, is the usual tonic.

To terminate all this, the strategy is simple: choose recognizable faces, and not precisely because of its impartiality. Inés Hernand, Andreu Buenafuente, Jesús Cintora … are just some of the names that are beginning to sound in the public chain, and in the case of Hernand, to assume more and more prominence. This young woman has not trembled by recognizing on more than one occasion that her passage through public television or programs such as ‘Masterchef’ That his privilege situation is a possibility to talk about his ideas or “human rights,” as he usually says. This activist profile, especially in social networks in which Hernand makes his ‘weekly review’ and comments on issues that are in the mouth of the government’s speech, assumes more and more prominence in the public chain. Although Hernand is not the only one. To her others are added such as Lalachus, which has gone from making podcasts and content for networks to present the tve bells in a matter of months. Lalachus and Inés Hernand to make, with great intention, already Jesús Cintora To “combat” the fake news in the afternoon the 2nd journalist, fired by Mediaset and the same TVE to “train” the spectators and become “banalization” of public television is, so far, the commitment to the future of the afternoons of the second chain in a program about “misinformation.”

The ‘infontreement’ that had barely room in the TVE five years ago for not distinguishing “between quality and ‘infoshow journalism” is now another bet. José Manuel Pérez Tornero, president between 2021 and 2022 of RTVE, tried to remove it. «It had never reached the extreme of using entertainment to create opinion currents and to support certain political lines. It is being configured on the grill with a clear covert editorial line, disguised as entertainment and very dangerous because before an informative you can raise some type of prevention, but on entertainment you are more relaxed in front of the message you send you. It is manipulation, ”says Leopoldo Abad.

A fiction still to see

The idea of ​​conceiving RTVE as a public service was for fiction a source of great series, such as ‘Isabel’ or ‘The Ministry of Time’, or a mirror in which to be seen as a society in fictions such as ‘Tell me’. «Fiction made society recognize in that fiction and the success of the series came from that recognition. It is now not built for this identification, but to sharpen certain changes of a political-ideological nature, not for happy coexistence, but to introduce dynamics of conflict and modification, ”says Serrano. ‘The lawyers’, about the crimes of Atocha, ‘eighteen’, which addresses immigration and prejudices, or ‘being or not being’ about the life of a trans boy, are some of the latest TVE projects, where José Pastor is in front, as well as in the cinema.

The RTVE platform has grown exponentially in recent years as well as other private chain platforms. However, the line marked in the issues and types of format is something that from the corporation wants to reinforce, they ensure internal sources of the house, and also with intentions. Although it is nothing new. Playz, one of the RTVE Play sections, is the house that saw the most political and activist Inés Hernand with ‘Gen Playz XL’ and is the platform that launched her to cover the controversial carpet of the Goya with that “You are an icon, presi”. It is now also the place where Videpodcast develops like ‘is the oven for buns’, ‘germ’, ‘what men’, ‘here I get off’. “RTVE wants to bet on this platform because, in addition to attracting young people, it is a way of spreading more enjoyablely and under the ‘infotainment’ the ideas and issues that also coincide with the interests of the government,” say internal sources of RTVE.