The TVE crisis due to the Polisario Front's trip to the Sahara: resignations, vetoes and rectifications

The frustrated trip of a group of RTVE journalists to the city of

, organized by the Polisario Front of Western Sahara, has opened the first serious rift between the new leadership of the entity and its newsroom.

While the News Councils protested the "veto" of

, the public denied this Sunday that said veto was such through a statement.

A dispute that broke out last Friday with a first statement from the RTVE News Council. "We show our complete rejection of the decision, taken by the management, that RTVE journalists not participate in a trip to Western Sahara," began the letter, which pointed directly to the president and the director of Informative Content, Esteve Crespo, for

as an interview with the general secretary of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.

A fact that forced Crespo himself to give public explanations arguing "the current shortage of human resources", that the trip, being organized by the Polisario Front, was "on behalf" and "it was not necessary" to move to Tindouf to cover such information. All this, at a time, where the former Foreign Minister had to testify at the headquarters of the National Court last week about Gali's entry into Spain and her admission to a hospital in Logroño to investigate whether it was illegal.

With the first waters already stirred, yesterday Sunday, the second stake between the direction of RTVE and its editorial staff arrived. Faced with the impossibility of the trip, the heads of International television and public radio,

and

, and the RNE journalist

before the public applause of a large number of network colleagues highlighting their "dignity", their "value" and their "public service responsibility" through social media.

Added to this was a new statement from the Public News Councils supporting the decision of their colleagues in the face of "the unfortunate decision" of the entity's leadership, using "vague" and "non-existent" reasons to justify the veto of a delegation's trip. to Tindouf.

The letter and the resignations forced the RTVE management to issue a new statement late at night denying said veto and relying on the corporation's "Information Statute" to not allow the trip.

In its statement, the public channel resorts to article 9, which states that "

when said circumstance may affect the impartiality of the information."

The entity's management understands that the trip to Tindouf was paid for by "interested sources" and stated in its letter that "it is working to send, by its own means, a team of informants to Tindouf."

But, even so, the first crisis in the new structure of the public chain has already opened.

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