Corporació Audiovisual de la Comunitat Valenciana (CACVSA)

Corporació Audiovisual de la Comunitat Valenciana, S.A. (CACVSA) operates the Valencian public broadcaster À Punt. Law 2/2024 replaced the previous structure of the Corporació Valenciana de Mitjans de Comunicació (CVMC) and its operating company, SAMC, with a single public company. The Generalitat approved CACVSA’s creation and statutes on 21 January 2025; its constitutive deed was executed on 23 January. Román Ceballos Sancho chairs the Board of Directors, and Francisco Aura Peidro is Director General.

Media assets

Television: À Punt.

Radio: À Punt Ràdio.

Digital: apuntmedia.es, including live television and radio, news, on-demand programmes and podcasts; mobile and smart-television applications.

Ownership and governance

CACVSA is wholly owned by the Generalitat. Law 2/2024 attaches it to the Generalitat’s presidency while expressly preserving management autonomy and functional independence. The Generalitat’s executive council acts as the company’s shareholders’ meeting.

The Board has eight members serving five-year terms. Parliamentary groups propose seven, whom Les Corts elects by a three-fifths majority on the first ballot or an absolute majority on the second. The Valencian Federation of Municipalities and Provinces proposes the eighth. The Generalitat formally appoints the directors. The Board proposes its president and the Director General for appointment by the Generalitat; the Director General also participates in Board meetings with a vote, except on matters affecting that office personally.

On 19 December 2024, Les Corts elected the first seven parliamentary nominees on a second ballot: five proposed by the Popular Party (PP) and two by Vox. PSPV-PSOE and Compromís did not put forward candidates. The earlier CVMC law had reserved nomination routes for the Citizens’ Council, audiovisual regulator and staff representatives; the 2024 law did not retain them. Nomination is distinct from direct appointment: those bodies proposed candidates under the earlier law.

Vicente Ordaz was the first Board president. He left in December 2025 to become the Generalitat’s regional secretary for communication. Les Corts elected Román Ceballos to the Board on 30 April 2026, and the Generalitat appointed him president on 19 May. CACVSA’s current Board listing names Ceballos, Rosalía Mayor, Susana Pérez, Pilar Caro, Julio Utrilla, María José Arambul, Santiago Calaforra and Ricard Gallego. Francisco Aura was appointed Director General in February 2025.

The Board approves the general programming plan and style book. The Director General manages the services and appoints senior staff, notifying the Board beforehand. Les Corts exercises parliamentary oversight. The independent Consell de l’Audiovisual de la Comunitat Valenciana (CACV) provides external audiovisual oversight and handles audience complaints.

Source of funding and budget

Law 2/2024 provides for public-service compensation from the Generalitat alongside advertising, sales and other income. It requires sufficient and viable public financing but does not carry forward the previous law’s fixed percentage band.

Generalitat funding represents 94.76% of the budgeted total. Direct comparison with the previous year requires care because the former CVMC and SAMC budgets covered a different corporate structure during the transition.

Editorial independence

Law 2/2024 requires objective, truthful and impartial information and respect for pluralism. CACVSA’s newsroom regulation prohibits binding editorial instructions from the Generalitat or political, economic and other groups. Its Consell d’Informatius, composed of newsroom professionals, is charged with defending editorial independence, although the law places it organisationally under the news director. The 2025 regulation allows the Council to object in writing to senior newsroom managers’ performance after they have served at least six months; the earlier arrangements for newsroom consultation and ratification before certain appointments were removed.

The governance transition was politically contested. In October 2024, then Generalitat president Carlos Mazón discussed the prospective leadership of À Punt with journalist Maribel Vilaplana, who declined the position. Alfred Costa, then Director General under the previous structure, resigned the following month, citing personal reasons. In May 2025 À Punt appointed Josep Magraner Director of News, moving his predecessor Iván Esteve to the senior post of chief editor. These events concern leadership and appointments; they do not, by themselves, establish instructions about particular stories.

The subsequent editorial record raises more direct concerns. By October 2025, four journalists had left invoking the conscience clause, according to reporting based on their accounts. In November, the Consell d’Informatius reported staff complaints about imposed news lines favouring the Valencian government, pressure on journalists and changes to published or scheduled texts. It also alleged an attempt to withhold recordings from the emergency coordination centre during the October 2024 floods. These are the Council’s reported findings and allegations, not adjudicated findings that Generalitat officials ordered the actions.

External scrutiny has established a narrower finding. After examining complaints and À Punt’s response, the CACV ruled unanimously in December 2025 that À Punt’s television coverage during much of the 25 October demonstration marking the first anniversary of the floods was insufficient for an event of evident public interest. It also acknowledged À Punt’s coverage on radio, its website and social media, and in special programming during the commemorative week. The ruling found a shortcoming in television coverage; it did not determine that the Generalitat directed that decision.

In April 2026, following further audience complaints, the CACV recommended effective application of the editorial protocol in all programmes and internal supervision of compliance with the style book. It also made recommendations on Valencian-language films and locally produced content. These were recommendations, rather than a finding of systematic political bias.

The Consell d’Informatius alleged further restrictions on coverage of a teachers’ protest in May 2026, including delayed publication of digital material. In September, staff representatives and journalists described instances they considered politically slanted, including limited participation by the STEPV teaching union in one programme and the omission of opposition voices from an agriculture discussion. Magraner disputed the accusation of a lack of plurality, saying opposition representatives appeared regularly and denying the presence of political commissioners in the newsroom. Separately, À Punt apologised in September 2025 for a segment of Va de bo referring to Pedro Sánchez and Diana Morant, removed it from its website and accepted responsibility for broadcasting it.

AI and digital policy

À Punt uses speech recognition developed with the Universitat Politècnica de València to support Valencian and Spanish transcription and subtitling. Its staff use Gestiosbt to search and transcribe archived material, and a separate application supplies live transcripts for news and documentation work. Its published account also describes verification tools, a Spanish-to-Valencian translation system, staff training and selected uses of external generative AI tools.

In its September 2026 account of these systems, À Punt stated that AI-assisted news production must remain subject to human supervision and correction. It described no standardised newsroom use of AI-generated images or video, while acknowledging individual use and identifying an AI-generated sports image published on social media in April 2026. The account sets out practices and principles but is not a comprehensive published editorial AI code.

Classification rationale

CACVSA remains classified State-Controlled (SC).

The Generalitat owns the company, acts as its shareholder and supplies approximately 94.8% of its planned 2026 financing. Seven of eight Board seats are elected by Les Corts, and all seven initial parliamentary nominees came from the PP and Vox. The Board approves general programming principles and proposes the Director General, who controls senior appointments and service programming. The law nevertheless expressly protects functional independence, and the newsroom council and external regulator remain operative safeguards.

The editorial basis for SC is the cumulative record under the new governance model: four reported conscience-clause departures, repeated allegations from the newsroom’s professional council of management-led interference, and the CACV’s independent finding that television coverage of a major demonstration critical of the then regional president was insufficient. The CACV’s finding does not establish the political motive for that coverage decision, and no direct instruction from the Generalitat concerning a particular story has been established. The classification is an assessment of institutional influence and documented editorial practice in combination.

September 2026