More than 160 professionals show their "intense concern" to the CGPJ and the attorney general for the unprecedented prison sentence of a journalist
A total of 163 journalists, most of them professionals specialized in information on courts and events, have signed a letter addressed to the General Council of the Judiciary and the State Attorney General expressing their “intense concern” about the unprecedented sentence that the Provincial Court of Huelva has imposed on a journalist for publishing in detail several proceedings related to the murder of the young Laura Luelmo in a town in Huelva in 2018.. The ruling, which had the support of the Prosecutor's Office, sentenced the journalist of the Huelva Información newspaper to two years in prison -and professionally disqualified-, who published various truthful information.
In the document sent to the governing body of judges and the Attorney General's Office, the journalists warn of the danger that “judges decide what is or is not newsworthy or what parts of reality should be published or hidden from citizens”. “Court journalists decide what we publish in accordance with the citizens' right to information, journalistic interest, editorial autonomy and the commitment to the audience of each media outlet.. (…) By recounting what happened in extremely serious crimes, the media inform public opinion of something they have a right to know: how crimes are investigated and prosecuted”, add the information professionals.
In addition, the journalists who sign the aforementioned documents – members of all the newsrooms of the main media outlets in the country, including EL MUNDO – describe as “very serious” that journalistic criteria be replaced by “the particular perception of each judge about what is or is not in a news story, resorting to the highest penal power of the State, jail, as a disproportionate punishment.”
“Court journalists know that privacy is one of the limits to freedom of information. We do not justify sensationalism or invasions of privacy that do not have a strict journalistic motivation.. Not everything goes in our trade. But a balance between both rights is required, which the Court of Huelva completely omits. (…) The secrecy of the investigation is not required of journalists, but exclusively of those forced to keep it (to which, by the way, a specific criminal offense is applied with less severe penalties than those provided for in article 197).. For this reason, the sentence can hardly be based on a crime of disclosure of summary secrets by journalists, protected by the duty and the right to exercise the freedoms protected by article 20.1d) of the Constitution,” they stress.
In addition, the signatories emphasize that “the criminal repression of possible excesses committed, instead of being sanctioned by civil jurisdiction, can cause journalists a discouragement effect that is enormously detrimental to the right to information of citizens.”
The unpublished sentence is not final and has already been appealed before the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia.