Spanish Prime Minister Announces New Fight Against “Fake News”

MADRID – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wants to make the fight against disinformation a priority, unveiling a “democratic renewal” plan even as the country’s conservative opposition has denounced it as an attempt to censor critical media.

Mr Sanchez is due to join Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to discuss the issue on September 24 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Brazil’s Supreme Court recently ordered the blocking of Elon Musk’s social media site X after it failed to comply with court rulings regarding “fake news.”

Mr Sanchez’s left-wing government last week unveiled a plan to combat fake news for the remaining three years of its term.

It includes the creation of a public register listing newspapers, their owners and advertising revenues, as well as measures to strengthen privacy rights and correct inaccurate information.

Mr Sanchez announced earlier this year that he would take steps to combat a “filth factory” spreading “disinformation and defamation”.

The decision comes after a court opened an investigation into his wife, Begona Gomez, over accusations of corruption and influence peddling made by a group linked to the far-right.

The group says its allegations against Ms Gomez are based on media reports.

Franco comparison

Professor Raul Magallon, a lecturer in social communication at Carlos III University in Madrid, said the government’s actions were “a step in the right direction” but “will not solve all the problems”.

“I think it’s positive insofar as they can help increase public trust in the media,” he told AFP.

However, the leader of the main conservative opposition party, the People’s Party (PP), Alberto Nunez Feijoo, called the plan “an offensive against judges, journalists and the media, a censorship plan”.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since Franco,” he told parliament, referring to Francisco Franco, the dictator who ruled Spain until his death in 1975.

Professor Magallon said the legacy of Franco’s dictatorship, which tightly controlled the media, made any regulation of the press a sensitive issue in Spain.

Most of the measures proposed by Mr Sánchez’s government will bring Spain into line with the requirements of the European Media Freedom Act, approved by the European Parliament in March with the support of four PP MEPs.

“This is another contradiction on the part of the Popular Party,” Paloma Roman, a political scientist at the Complutense University of Madrid, told AFP.

“I think the PP will continue its activities because its goal is to continue the frontal opposition” to the government, she said.