The mayor of Valencia announces a public television 20 days before the municipal elections

The mayor of Valencia and Compromís candidate to revalidate the mayoralty, Joan Ribó, announced this Wednesday “a public means of communication” for the city. His initiative comes after eight years in the mayor's office in which he has not addressed this project.

The proposal comes a few days before the municipal elections on May 28, and seeks to recover local television “which the Popular Party closed in January 2012 due to its mismanagement.”

The leader assures that its implementation “would not entail practically any expense”, another argument that makes it difficult to understand why he did not promote municipal television until the last days of his second term.

“It would be done through a platform where audiovisual and digital content would be posted, such as television programs, podcasts or daily radio news,” he said.

It is an electoral promise to “be able to give a voice to the citizens and to the different entities of the city”. The Valencian coalition ensures that this new means of communication will promote “participation, transparency and local information”.

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“The city of Valencia already had a local means of communication,” insisted Ribó. This is the Municipal Television of Valencia (TMV), closed in the aforementioned year 2012 to generate savings of the 180,000 euros that its annual budget amounted to, according to what the mayoress, Rita Barberá, specified at the time.. The closure occurred in the midst of the economic crisis

That decision “was criticized by the Professional Association of Valencian Journalists and by the rest of the parties, who criticized that the PP cuts were focused only on destroying work,” Joan Ribó stressed on Wednesday.. The then councilor of Compromís denounced when the news broke that the council spent 150,000 euros annually on the ornamentation of the Puente de las Flores.

“Public service”

“In any case, what Compromís per València proposes is a public service medium adapted to the new times, a platform where à la carte content can be consumed, a booming format and which is the way in which the most audiovisual content today”, argued the candidate.

In this platform, “a voice and space would be given to the citizens of Valencia in general, and to the different entities of the city”. “It would be a place where local and proximity information would be the protagonist, promoting transparency, participation and public service to citizens,” he stressed.

On this public television, as promised by Ribó, citizens will be able to find out “all the cultural proposals, initiatives of the third sector, contests and current events in Valencia”. “A place where you can meet people from our city who are standing out for some reason, and also a channel through which to ask questions and get answers,” he concluded.