The Spanish Radio and Television Corporation (Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, RTVE) is Spain’s public broadcasting company. Television was launched in Spain in 1956. In 1973, the country’s two broadcast networks, RNE and Televisión Española (TVE—Spanish Television) were merged into an entity called RTVE Centralised Public Service.
Today, RTVE airs the television channels La1 (focused on news and current affairs), La2 (geared on cultural programming and documentaries), Teledeporte (airing mostly sports), 24h (an all-news channel), Clan (specialized in children’s programming), TVE Internacional and two channels fully devoted to Catalonia region; and the radio network RNE, which consists of six radio channels.
Media assets
Television: Televisión Española (TVE)- La 1, La 2, Canal 24h, Teledeporte, Clan, La 1 Cataluna, La 2 Cataluna, Teledeporte, TVE Internacional, TVE HD
Radio: Radio Nacional de España (RNE)- Radio Nacional, Radio Clásica, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio 5, Radio Exterior
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
Faced with massive deficits, the public media companies TVE and RNE were dissolved in 2006 by the Law of State Radio and Television (Law No 17 of 2006), and were replaced by Corporación RTVE, a state-owned company with “special autonomy” in charge of providing public broadcasting services. Its social capital is entirely state-owned.
According to the law, the highest governing structure at RTVE is the Board of Directors that consists of nine members plus a chair, six of whom are appointed by the Chamber of Deputies and four by the Senate, the two chambers of the Spanish parliament.
Since 2018, the corporation has been experiencing a profound crisis as parliament failed to appoint its Board of Directors, naming instead a sole provisional administrator for the station, Rosa María Mateo. In January 2020, she asked the government to appoint a board, threatening that she would resign. In November 2020, the government decided to annul a competition that had been ongoing since 2018 aimed at appointing the Board. The move was said by experts to pave the way for the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the People’s Party (PP) to appoint their own people in the RTVE Board, to secure control of the station for the next six years. Eventually, in February 2021, the Board of Directors was appointed by the government, with seven of the ten members coming upon nomination from PSOE and PP.
Attacks on the editorial independence of RTVE continued in 2022 when the president of the station, Jose Manuel Perez Tornero, resigned under pressure from the government, which has been trying to secure its control over the public broadcaster in anticipation of a series of elections in Spain.
Source of funding and budget
According to Law No. 8 of 2009, RTVE has been funded through public financing since 2010. The budget of RTVE consists fully of public funding, a combination of state subsidies and other forms of taxes (funds from radio frequency fees, taxes imposed on private television companies and taxes charged on telecom operators). In 2022, RTVE received some €1.04bn in a state subsidy, which is almost entirely the station’s budget, according to an annual report from the company.
Editorial independence
In recent years, during a major reform of the public broadcasting system in Spain, RTVE has come under severe editorial pressures from the government. According to the RTVE’s News Council, an internal body in charge of guaranteeing the broadcaster’s independence, the cases of manipulation by political powers have skyrocketed since 2015. Although the station has mechanisms in place to assess the broadcaster’s independence, it does not have tools to prevent manipulation before it occurs. The pressures have been often accompanied by removals of journalists and editors who were too critical of the government.
The pressures on the editorial coverage at RTVE increase when there is a larger majority in power. When the composition of parliament is more fragmented, the pressures slightly decrease for the simple reason that the governance structures at RTVE are not dominated by a single political group.
Examples of editorial manipulation at RTVE continued in recent years, according to reports from journalists who worked with the broadcaster. Following the resignation of Jose Manuel Perez Tornero as President of RTVE, the government appointed Elena Sanchez at the helm of the broadcaster. Sanchez said that she had no pact with any political party and that she will work in her new position towards ensuring the station’s independence from any political pressures. However, the station continues to bow to political influences, according to content monitoring conducted on RTVE by our center and opinions of journalists from Spain interviewed for this report.
The Law No. 17 of 2006 “guarantees” the editorial independence of RTVE (although the law doesn’t put forward specific provisions that would establish its independence).
RTVE has various mechanisms aimed at validating its editorial independence. One of the key ones is the so-called News Council, an internal body created by the Law No. 17 (which regulates the RTVE), consisting of representatives of RTVE. There are three sub-committees within the council, one focusing on TVE (with 13 members), one dealing with RNE (with nine members) and one handling the online platforms of RTVE (with three members). The role of this body is to monitor the RTVE affairs, including its programming, to identify threats to the broadcaster’s editorial independence. Although the Council has been very vocal in recent years, publicizing all sorts of threats to the RTVE’s editorial independence, its work doesn’t have the expected impact mostly because the Council reacts after political manipulation has taken place.
September 2023