Galicia: EFJ supports journalists on strike at CRTVG and opposes the media law reform
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) stands in solidarity with the workers of Galicia’s public radio and television (CRTVG), who have been on indefinite strike since 7 October against the dismantling of the public service and attempts to punish and coerce workers who exercise their free right to strike.
Today, the strike is temporarily suspended after more than thirty days, which has paralysed the broadcasting of the outsourced magazine ‘O Termómetro’, replacing the old programme ‘A Revista’, on the air for almost thirty years. The last programme of the 65 initially contracted will be broadcast, and the strike committee is bidding farewell with a 24-hour strike while awaiting the public broadcaster’s next business decisions in this regard.
The new television programme is practically identical to the previous one but 154% more expensive, as it is contracted out to external companies. This follows a trend that the Galician public media have been suffering for more than a decade, which deepens the manipulation of the contents, as they are produced by related companies and without the commitment of service to the citizenship that public workers have.
The new legislative framework that the Regional Government of Galicia intends to approve, using its absolute majority, will be fundamental for the immediate future of the public media. The draft law eliminates the guarantees of in-house production and the protection of news production, which can thus be completely outsourced. A representation of the strike committee went to Strasbourg at the invitation of MEP Ana Miranda to bring to the attention of the European institutions the dangers of a project that could be approved at the beginning of 2025.
In addition, the proposed reform provides for the election by absolute majority of the general management of the broadcaster, instead of the current reinforced majority, which in practice means direct election by the Popular Party.
In view of the referral of the text to the regional parliament this month, the EFJ stresses the need to guarantee the independence and plurality of audiovisual services, in line with the provisions of the Article 5 of the European Media Freedom Act, which will be compulsory from August 2025.
The EFJ defends the vital importance of safeguarding the independent functioning of the publicly owned media by consolidating them as a retaining wall against the threats to democracy that certain media environments protect by encouraging phenomena such as fake news and disinformation.
