Press freedom: still subject to an old-fashioned phone call
María Ramírez of recently launched daily El Español writes in yesterday’s edition about the International Press Institute’s report raising serious concerns about mounting government interference in the media in Spain. Over the last quarter century, in my capacity as an academic, I have written extensively for the Spanish press, while regularly appearing on television and radio to express my views about technology and innovation in this country. Over that time, I have too have been pressured by government and business interests, often in the form of an old-fashioned telephone call to my superiors.
But I am one of the lucky ones who works for an institution that gives its teaching staff complete freedom, as I know from my own experience, having put my employer’s commitment to the test on innumerable occasions.
As our hero says at the end of Blade Runner: “I have seen things you wouldn’t believe”… unless you work in the media. I have seen CEOs call up colleagues, my dean, or even the founder of the institution to tell them to either get me under control or simply to fire me.
I have seen idiots living in the past try to convene my business school’s ethics board so as to get me fired for “incitement to steal intellectual copyright”, as well as corporations threaten the school with all sorts of repercussions for employing somebody like me. But I can say in all honesty that I have never once felt the slightest pressure from the school to withdraw something I have said: a teacher’s intellectual freedom is something that must be put regularly to the test.
I chose my business school precisely because it seemed to me to provide the best environment to develop my entrepreneurial spirit. At that time, still in my early twenties, and the product of 14-years education at a Jesuit-run school, I didn’t give much importance to the independence of the institution, or to my responsibilities in maintaining that independence, or to its ability to attract students. And over time, that independence has become the very thing that keeps me there: I can think of few institutions that better represent it, and consider myself to be very privileged.
You might find what I write about more or less interesting, sometimes more rigorous or inspired: the point is that everything I say is based on my own, independent analysis; I have never sold my opinion to anybody, and on only three occasions has my work either been withdrawn or substantially altered (I’ll tell you about it another time; for the moment, I put them down to experience).
But the sad fact is that I am very much the exception in Spain when it comes to expressing my opinion in print. Just about every editorial project I know at some point comes face to face with the realities and limitations of the world. Sometimes we implicitly recognize those boundaries and simply impose self-censorship by keeping away from them, by “avoiding trouble”. At other times, the word comes from on high that this or that cannot be said, that this topic is best left alone. Maintaining editorial independence and allowing people to write and say what they want is no easy task.
On the one hand, all this makes me value the institution where I have worked for the last quarter of a century so much the more. At the same time, it has prepared me for other projects I have become involved in, for example El Español — to which I contribute a weekly column, as well as sitting on its board — , and which has so far in its short history, lived up to its promises as a lively, independent voice in Spanish journalism. Such an approach can only work if everybody, from top to bottom, is committed to free speech, and if the board is prepared to stand up to advertisers who believe they can interfere with editorial. It also helps when your subscription fees and ability to make money do not depend on this or that company advertising.
Sadly, editorial independence is not much in demand in Spain at the moment, thanks in large part to a government that sees it as something to be bought, traded, bartered, or simply taken away as it sees fit, as though this were all part of the democratic game. What’s worse, as is becoming increasingly obvious to the international media, Spain’s media seems increasingly prepared to play along
Among our most basic freedoms is the right to a free and independent press, and that is the only basis on which to evaluate the media: the extent to which it is prepared to offend the powers that be. And as my own experience shows, this applies not just to journalists, but to academics, analysts, researchers, and many other things: telling the truth, and being able to tell the truth, is arguably the only thing that matters in a true democracy, and our governments need to be reminded of this regularly.
(En español, aquí)
