The Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía (CAA) urges broadcasters to take urgent and effective measures to balance the presence of municipal groups and the opposition in news programmes.
• It notes with grave concern the predominance and excessive presence of municipal governments in the news programmes of most local television channels
• The CAA reminds broadcasters that they are obliged to guarantee citizens’ right to plural information.
The Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía (CAA) today, 11 January, publishes its latest report on political pluralism on local public television channels in Andalucía, based on an exclusively quantitative measurement of the speaking time of political actors. This study, which covers June 2022 to June 2023 (bearing in mind that Manilva saw a change of government in May 2023), places speaking times and news programmes in context: the general programming, the political reality of the municipality from which each channel broadcasts, and the socioeconomic reality of the town halls and of the channels themselves, through their budgets and the staff they have.
EXCESSIVE PRESENCE OF MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS
The CAA notes with grave concern the predominance and excessive presence of municipal governments in the news programmes of most of the local television channels analysed. Regardless of the political colour of the various governments that run the channels, a «modus operandi» is becoming established whereby the presence of the party making up the municipal governing team is favoured to the detriment of other parties. Consequently, the CAA urges broadcasters to take urgent and effective measures to balance the presence of municipal groups and the opposition in news programmes.
Despite the recommendations made the previous year in the report for this latest period analysed, a general worsening is noted in the failure to observe the principles of political pluralism which this body, as an independent authority, is entrusted with safeguarding in Andalucía. Accordingly, broadcasters are reminded that they are obliged to guarantee citizens’ right to plural information under the existing legal framework and in compliance with the Constitution, the Statute of Autonomy and the audiovisual laws.
The Andalusian regulator expresses its alarm and urges urgent action from those broadcasters which, despite already having high shares of airtime for governing parties in their news content, saw those percentages increase. In RTV Manilva and Estepona TV the figure is 98.9 per cent, which reveals a lack of pluralism in favour, at the date of the report, of Compromiso Manilva and PSOE in the case of Manilva.
SAFEGUARDING PLURALISM
The CAA is entrusted with the task of safeguarding «respect for constitutional and statutory rights, freedoms and values in the audiovisual media» and «carrying out studies on different aspects of the audiovisual system».
Since 2009, this regulatory body has been producing reports on political pluralism without interruption, in order to gain a more detailed understanding of the reality of public television channels in our Autonomous Community. These are quantitative reports produced according to a technical and objective methodology for the collection, classification and presentation of data, which was unanimously agreed by the CAA’s plenary in April 2008.
These periodic reports analyse, always quantitatively and not qualitatively, various aspects of the news programmes offered by broadcasters, highlighting the distribution of speaking time of political actors by role (institutional or party) and gender. Speaking time in news programmes is a fundamental instrument for ensuring news coverage proportionate to the electoral and institutional relevance of each party and, consequently, for guaranteeing respect for political pluralism. Measuring airtime, as a reliable and measurable indicator of pluralism, makes it possible for independent regulatory authorities such as the CAA to carry out supervision.
