THE GREAT REPLACEMENT: The operation of the extreme right to supplant journalists with digital agitators | Spain

In his first appearance, Trump's secretary of communication, Karoline Leavitt, announced his decision to entry into the white house of the White House to Podcastersbloggers e Influencers to reflect « the new media landscape » of the country. Of course, it reassured journalists by assuring them that a special seat for new media would be enabled and would not be to the detriment of traditional calls.

Last Wednesday, Leavitt said that the rules of the game that have governed the relations of the president of the United States with the press were changed: the reduction of the reduced pool of journalists, photographers and cameras that follow Trump and can ask him questions would no longer be done by the Association of Co -responsible of the White House (WHCA). From now on, it would be his own team that would decide who may or may not pass.

The next day, Reuters, the world's main news agency, and the Huffpost, a medium on-line With versions in a dozen countries, they were out of the informative coverage of Trump's first meeting with his government. Instead, Newsmax entered, a cable television that propagated the theory that Democrat Joe Biden had stolen Trump the 2020 elections, and Blaze Media, an ultra -consisting media conglomerate. Associated Press (AP) was also excluded, the largest US news agency, to which The White House has vetoed for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico, as Trump intends to impose.

On February 7 and 8, the leaders of Patriots.EU gathered in Spain, the party that brings together the European extreme right closest to Trump. In the rally they held at a hotel in Madrid Santiago Abascal, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán, among others, about 250 journalists were accredited, Many of them foreigners. Everyone could access the event without restrictions. The following Monday, the country went to the weekly press conference of the Vox spokesman, José Antonio Fúster, to verify whether the Patriots rally was a change in attitude of the party regarding the right to information. At all. When he ceased to be under the focus of international public opinion, the Ultra formation denied the free access of the media to its headquarters.

The veto to the journalists of the Grupo has dates back to November 2019 and the cause, as Vox then said, was An editorial, entitled Duty of replica, that criticized the silence of the other candidates for the xenophobic statements of Abascal in a televised debate. That is to say: false news or a bulge was not punished, but an opinion. The Supreme Court sentenced in 2021 that The right to information has « preferential character » and that recognizing the parties a « right of admission » of journalists at their headquarters would « spray » the constitutional principles. Despite this, as the sentence referred to a resolution of the Central Electoral Board, Vox only feels obliged to comply with it in the campaign period.

Although there are numerous venated media, Vox's press room is not empty. The gaps that leave among information professionals are filled with representatives of entities such as Herqles, whose leader, Carlos Pintado, intervened in the rally with which the Ultra Party launched its campaign for the European elections of 2024, where it was presented as a “agent for cultural battle”. O Patriot Action, a youth association born last January that is defined as « patriotic and conservative. »

But the flagships of The Ultra Media Navy They are the TV bull, by businessman Julio Ariza, political godfather of Abascal; and alarm state TV (EDA TV), by Javier Negre, sentenced in 2019 for publishing in The world An interview that never granted the ex -girlfriend of a double murderer. EDA TV began as an agitation channel on YouTube during the pandemic and became a multimedia platform (it also has a broadcaster, reports Radio) after an injection of almost five million euros and the entrance to its capital of Marcos de Quinto, former director of Coca-Cola and ex-deputed citizens; The owner of the Eulen company and the daughters of the businessman Publio Cordón, killed by the GRAPO terrorist band.

Last summer, Negre traveled to Buenos Aires, where he took advantage of the press wheels of the Casa Rosada spokesman, Manuel Adorni, to launch accusations of alleged corruption; But not against the government of that country, but against several Argentine journalists. President Javier Milei retweeted his interventions. Negre was associated in Argentina with Fernando Cerimedo, Milei campaign strategistwhich presumes to handle 50,000 false accounts in the networks through artificial intelligence; and bought, for an unleashed amount, 50% of The daily righta website founded by the current director of Digital Communication of the Argentine Presidency, Juan Carreira, aka Juan do. The daily right He encouraged the assault on the Brazilian Congress and the frustrated coup d'etat of the followers of Jair Bolsonaro in January 2023.

In Spain, EDA TV employees as Vito Quilescandidate for European Parliament in the Ultra Agitator List Alvise Pérezthey have used their press accreditation to make activism. The technique they use, unexpectedly addressing a public figure and recording its reaction, is not original. The program has already popularized it three decades in Spain Whoever falls falls. The difference is that the humorous tone of that time has become aggressive, they are directed exclusively against people who identify with the left and have gotten into the Congress, hindering the work of true journalists. If the latter refuse to make them figures, they spread their identity and image through social networks to be grass of a peat of stalkers.

Last October, on his return from Buenos Aires, Negre publicly pointed to two journalists, of ABC and 20 minutes, for not having seconded him in his diatribe against socialist spokesman Patxi López; What, according to him, had an obligation to do for working in conservative media. The incident occurred in the press room of the Congress, to which EDA TV has access despite the fact that, in negre words, its objective is not to inform what happens there, but « oppose the government and its partners. » « More opposition than opposition parties, » he presumes.

The drop that filled the glass were the threats to a reporter of the sixth, to which the ultras activists accused them of censoring them because he indicated to the television camera of the pool from the Congress that he stopped recording when Quiles moved away with Minister Ángel Víctor Torres from the place where she was. What happened, according to several witnesses, is that the reporter had the microphone that collected the sound for the camera and her obligation was to remain in the hall and not follow the minister to the patio of the building. Negre employees spread the image and name of the reporter, calling her « unscrupulous scoundrel » and threatened, in a mafia tone, to publish the homes of journalists working in Congress.

In an unprecedented reaction, some 80 Informators of the vast majority of the media accredited in the Cortes were concentrated last Wednesday before the door of the lions To denounce the « unacceptable behavior » of agitators who, accredited as journalists, blackmail with « disqualifications, insults, signs » and threats on social networks.

In theory, Vox is not related to Negre's media conglomerate but, when the journalist and Tertulian Antonio Maestre launched through the air the microphone of the Eda TV employee who was chasing him on the street, the Abascal party published an allegedly ironic tweet in which he invited his followers to participate in an alleged “Micros launch contest” of La Sexta, TVE, TVE, the chain « Live to be possible. » Those who did not even intend to be humorous are the threats that the National Vixe Secretary of Vox and Deputy Manuel Mariscal directed against The voice of the Tagus. After qualifying the “Estercolero” newspaper, he said that the Talavera de la Reina City Council, which govern the PP and its party in coalition, no longer hires advertising. « Soon it will not be done from Toledo and you will have to close, » he added. The Association of Journalists of Toledo, with the support of the Federation that groups the associations throughout Spain, condemned these words and demanded that the threats and intimidation to the media (of communication) are not unpunished. « 

“I worry that we do not see that what is underway is a great replacement operation. They want to replace journalists with professional agitators, ”he warns Fernando González UrbanejaPresident of the Arbitration, Complaints and Deontology Commission of Journalism. « Are we not aware that they want to erase us? » He adds. Urbaneja confesses that, in more than 50 years of journalism, he has never seen « a harassment operation (against freedom of the press) as the current one » and declares himself « scandalized that the profession does not react »: « Where are the journalists, the directors, the editors? We are entangled in our small intestine complaints, without realizing what comes to us. And they will get it if we are not able to value journalism, which is nothing other than the diligent search for truth. ”

Josep Carles Rius, president of the Consell de la Information de Catalunya, He believes that there is « a joint offensive of political, economic and technological powers against conventional media », before which they are « in a state of shock”, Unable to react. In his opinion, journalism « cannot be neutral to hate discourse, which threatens democracy and coexistence », or remain impassive against those who « lie with total impunity and use bulls as a weapon of destruction. » “The profession has to react. We are doing the future in it, ”he warns. For Rius, the response is in the professional self -regulation bodies, such as the presiding council, but it is necessary « a legal framework for your decisions to be respected. » « A medium that does not meet the ethical code is not a means of information, » he says. The habit does not make the monk, nor the microphone to the journalist.