The Motril watchdog, Audio-Visual Board has warned the town’s TV station (Telemotril) that it must respect “pluralism in politics;” i.e. equal airtime.

Giving each political party equal airtime opportunities on public media such as TV and Radio is one of the basic principles.

The resolution handed down by the board had been unanimously approved beforehand during a Plenary Meeting at the beginning of last month, following a complaint lodged by the IU-Equo concerning Radio Televisión Motrileña.

A report drawn up for the board showed a lack of ‘pluralism’ in time sharing amongst the spokespersons of political parties present within the municipality, compared with the airtime awarded to the governing party, the Partido Popular.

The report had examined the news programming content, finding that the time allotment to IU-Equo was far inferior to its percentage of political representation, fruit of the last elections.

The board concluded that the opposition parties, IU and PSOE suffered an unfair disadvantage compared to the governing coalition of the PP, PMAS and Ciudadanos.

Such was the imbalance that statements made by members of the governing coalition occupied 76% of news airtime compared with 0,8% for the opposition parties. The rest of the airtime was occupied by non-political news items; i.e, incidents, accidents, sporting and cultural events.

The resolution was well received by IU-Equo, who had pointed out that in every hour of news the Mayor enjoyed 24 minutes of airtime.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)