• Dina Case.Pablo Iglesias attacks critical journalists from the Government and guarantees that they will be insulted

"It is an absolutely reprehensible and intolerable attempt at intimidation." This is how Nemesio Rodríguez López , president of the Federation of Journalists Associations of Spain (FAPE), values the attack by the second vice-president of the Government, Pablo Iglesias, on critical journalists at the press conference after the Council of Ministers on Tuesday.

Rodríguez López wanted to show the "total disagreement" of the body he represents with the statements of Iglesias , who has considered "natural" that information professionals receive "insults" or "unpleasant things" through social networks and has also He specifically quoted the names of some journalists to later allege that in his party, Unidas Podemos, there is "criticism" and not "signaling" towards them.

"It must be naturalized that in an advanced democracy, anyone who has a public presence and who has responsibilities in a communications company or in the police is subject to both criticism and insult on social networks," Iglesias said. "All of us who have a public presence and relevance when it comes to participating in debates, and there media professionals have it, criticism is normal and typical of democracy. The unpleasant things about networks that we do not like are also normal "

Our fundamental concern is that insults become threats

Alfonso Armada, President of Reporters Without Borders

The president of the FAPE disagrees with the assessment of the leader of the purple formation and rejects such personalization "for being a violation of the free exercise of journalism, which is a basic pillar of our democracy."

And he added: "To point journalists with the danger of amplification that social networks have is to put them as targets of attacks and insults. And at the same time it is an attempt at intimidation, something absolutely rejectable and intolerable . Especially when those statements come from a public representative, "Rodríguez López has criticized. "Members of a Government and a Parliament are obliged to defend the constitutional right to freedom of information and the practice of journalism, not to incite journalists to be intimidated or harassed. It is the opposite of what they should of doing".

Rejection statement

The FAPE published a statement yesterday in which it denounced practices such as those of the second vice-president of the Government and the spokesman for Unidas Podemos in Congress, Pablo Echenique. "Of course, journalists are not exempt from criticism. We are subject to our opinions being criticized and disagreeing, of course. But insults have nothing to do with criticism," concludes the representative of the press. .

Reporters Without Borders has also spoken about Iglesias' words. "There is a fairly polarized environment in both the political and journalistic atmospheres," Alfonso Armada, representative of the NGO Reporters Without Borders-Spain, contextualizes. "This kind of rifirrafes may like more or less, in RSF we do not like it too much, but our fundamental concern as an organization in defense of press freedom is that insults do not become threats and that there is no persecution from government agencies or from political parties to specific journalists. "

Armada blames the situation on the "slightly debased and harsh" atmosphere we are experiencing. " There is a hellish noise, a kind of 'opinionitis' and absolute politicization of everything and in the end I do not know if citizens see this with interest or not . It seems to me that there is a saturation of opinion that as a journalist does not excite me and as reader, either, but it is part of the daily political landscape ".

"As we see a journalist with few resources or little capacity who is threatened in his work, we are going to report him as it happened in the case of the 'trial'," he warns.

The Madrid Press Association (APM) had also spoken through its president Juan Caño regarding the messages of Unidas Podemos on social networks against journalists such as Vicente Vallés. "My total support and that of the APM to @VicenteVallesTV. Any indication to journalists, from the party that comes, supposes a violation of the freedom of the press and the democratic right to freely inform citizens #YoSoyVicenteValles", wrote on Twitter the last Monday

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