TV3 faces the first case in its history of a journalist who invokes the conscience clause and demands to leave the company. Through this ethical resource, journalists can preserve their professionalism over and above business interests. Journalist Santiago Torres has already filed the lawsuit. His lawyer has sent all the documentation to the court number 6 of the social of Barcelona and to the members of the Parliamentary Control Commission of the CCMA.
This demand comes when the new Generalitat of Pere Aragonès has to negotiate the presidency of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA) and a contest must be called to appoint a new director of TV3 to replace Vicent Sanchis.
The lawyer of the implicated qualifies the head of the news as “sectarian and obsessive”
Santiago Torres is one of the most veteran journalists of TV3 and has won several awards. Torres had worked for 30 years as a reporter on the program 30 Minutes , dedicated to the great reports of the regional chain. In 2017 he was commissioned to report Siege in the referendum , which addressed the application of 155 in Catalonia. According to Torres’ lawyer, the news chief, David Bassa, summoned him to a series of meetings to give him guidelines and announce that he, as news chief, would be the person who would contact the politicians who would participate in this documentary about the process . In this sense, Santiago Torres maintains that as a journalist he had never attended meetings of these characteristics, which in his opinion limited his independence, so he did not accept this tutelage.
From that moment on, he no longer worked on documentaries. And the conflict between Torres and TV3 began, which continues to this day. Santiago Torres has been in various lawsuits with the regional chain for four years over this issue. He already made a first complaint of harassment to TV3 when Bassa was separating him from his work of making great reports in documentary format. But the judge agreed with the Catalan chain.
The worker kept trying and turned it into a matter of conscience clause, a constitutional right of information professionals that aims to guarantee independence in the performance of their professional function. Finally, Torres was appointed as desk editor for 3/24, the 24-hour news channel of the CCMA.
Torres’ lawyer alleges in his lawsuit that David Bassa has demonstrated a clear will to control journalists, with the aim that the messages broadcast always respond to a certain political and ideological vision. “Never before has a news officer had such an extremely sectarian information control behavior, and obsessive about certain journalists in the house.
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