The gaps in freedom of information: the cases of journalists detained doing their job are growing

“I am a journalist! I am a journalist! If you want I can show you my accreditation. I have the right to report!” At mid-morning on Saturday, November 6, the reporter Joanna Giménez was trying to get the staff of the Prado Museum to allow her to continue recording the two activists from the NGO Futuro Vegetal who had stuck their hands to ‘Las Majas’ by Francisco de Goya to protest against inaction on climate change. The collaborator of the newspaper El Salto had been summoned together with a photographer, Isabel, to document that protest, which is a common practice in the field of social movements. Neither of them belongs to the environmental group.

After the action, police officers identified them and were able to leave. But they were arrested a day later. They spent more than 30 hours withheld until a judge decreed their provisional release. Both face legal proceedings for the same crime against property that is attributed to the activists. He is a criminal type punishable by up to three years in prison. The names of Joanna and Isabel join the list of information professionals who, in recent years, have faced arrests and legal proceedings in the framework of their professional work.

It is a drift that worries organizations such as the Platform in Defense of Freedom of Information (PDLI) or Reporters Without Borders, which have supported the journalists. And that puts the focus on the gaps in the constitutional right to freedom of information, despite the fact that it enjoys special protection. Organizations such as Amnesty International have also shown their “concern” about the disproportionate response that, on many occasions, professionals who “document” acts of civil disobedience or police actions receive from the authorities. The far-right party Vox has announced that it will file a lawsuit against the two journalists and the two activists for crimes against property, resistance and disobedience, public disorder and trespassing on the home of a legal entity.

After being released, Giménez published a series of tweets in which he denounced that his detention is “a reflection of the constant repression” faced by journalists who cover issues related to social movements or activism. “This situation creates a very dangerous and inadmissible precedent in a supposed democracy where freedom of the press exists. We must promote legislation that protects female reporters who cover acts of civil disobedience. Which, after all, are in the public interest,” he wrote.

The photojournalist Mireia Comas knows what it is to have a prison sentence on her shoulders. She was arrested in October 2020 when she was covering the eviction of a mother and her five-month-old baby in Terrassa (Barcelona) for allegedly having attacked a mossa d’esquadra to enter the area where another arrest was being made. . She was arrested “using disproportionate force,” according to her version, and accused of a crime of attack on authority. After the trial, she was acquitted. The sentence remarked that the “contradictions” in the version of the Mossos led to the existence of “serious doubts” about the accusation.

Comas was exonerated but for almost two months a request for a year in prison weighed on her. She was freelance and had to start a sale of her photographic work to pay the 2,000 euros for her defense. She remembers that time with great “anxiety” and great “concern” for her three children, who were aware of the entire situation. Until then, Ella Comas had documented numerous evictions and how several young migrants survive in an abandoned warehouse in Terrassa. She and she has continued to do it because she carries it “in her blood”, although she acknowledges that now she “avoids certain situations”. She also questions that there is no type of “reparation” after experiencing a situation like this. “We need therapy to get over it,” she says.

In the coverage of an eviction, the photographers Andrés Kudacki and Rodrigo García were also arrested in 2014. According to the latter on the website of the organization Gea Photowords, both went to cover the eviction of a person with disabilities in the Lavapiés neighborhood of Madrid. They were taking pictures inside the house when the police arrived, who broke in “violently”. After the eviction took place, the reporters and other activists were handcuffed and taken to the police station. They stayed there for more than ten hours. The arrest led to a case for alleged crimes of disobedience and resistance to authority that was filed before going to trial, legal sources confirm to elDiario.es.

The “lack of evidence” also determined the acquittal of the El País photojournalist Albert García, who had to go to trial for allegedly having pushed a national police officer in the protests against the sentence of the October 2019 process. The Prosecutor’s Office initially accused him of a crime of attack and minor injuries, although later he changed the first of the crimes to that of resistance and ended up lowering the request to a fine of 4,800 euros. He initially asked for a year and a half in prison.

After almost two years of judicial proceedings, García was acquitted. The Justice did not see enough evidence that there had been a struggle between the police and the photographer and it was considered proven that there was a “grab” of the agent. At least one video denied the alleged aggression. “He should never have been accused of absolutely invented facts. Enough of the police setups!” García said after the sentence.

The journalist Edurne Correa, a collaborator of the alternative media La Haine, went through a similar journey. She was arrested at a demonstration in 2014, she spent a night in jail and ended up in legal proceedings for allegedly assaulting two police officers at that protest. The investigation lasted for more than four years in which a request for six years in prison weighed on her. In the end, she was acquitted. The sentence highlighted the “inaccuracies”, the “lack of uniformity” and the “contradictions” of the versions of the agents who denounced it, according to Público.

“I had to reorganize my life to deal with a crude police set-up. They were years of great uncertainty. Seeing what was falling at that time with freedom of the press, I came to think that they would condemn me. But we managed to turn the accusation around, which is not usual, ”she says. Correa requested that testimony be inferred from the statements of the agents, considering that they lied to justify their detention. But his request was unsuccessful. “It’s the same impunity as always,” he laments. In his opinion, the arrest of the journalists who documented the action of the Prado Museum is an “aberration” and a “show” that “the free press continues to be persecuted, which tells what power does not want to be told.” ”, he maintains.

Precisely an accusation for false testimony is the one that weighs on four journalists who denounced a police attack at a Vox rally in the Vallecas neighborhood of Madrid, in April 2021. The accused policeman was acquitted and those who now face a judicial process They are the journalists: the complainant of the attack, Guillermo Martínez, and three other professionals who were with him at the time and who appeared as witnesses at the trial.

Judge Pilar Martínez Gamo accepted the policeman’s version as correct: that the photojournalist fell to the ground and yelled at him when the agent offered him his hand to get up. And she considered that the informants were not telling the truth in their appearances as witnesses. She accused Martínez of acting “in bad faith and procedural recklessness.” He and the other three professionals categorically deny having disguised his testimony to frame the police officer.

Following the sentence, Judge María Cristina Díaz, head of Madrid’s investigating court number 29, opened a case against the journalists, who are now facing an investigation for a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. It is the same magistrate who investigates the journalists who documented the action of the Prado Museum and who asked elDiario.es to reveal, at the request of the Francos, the sources that allowed the publication of the list of assets contained in the Pazo de Meirás in the middle of the dispute over ownership of the property that the dictator’s family occupied for 82 years.

Guillermo Martínez sees in this judicial action a clear “warning to navigators” for those who come as witnesses to testify about a police action. And he insists that it is not an “attack” on him and his colleagues, but on “the entire profession.” Despite everything, he says that he continues to do what he considers “necessary.” “I haven’t stopped writing far right, I cover mobilizations and I’m still on the streets,” says this freelance photojournalist who claims to have had the support of the CNT union and the media with which he regularly collaborates throughout this process.

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