Spain will tighten rules for media to combat fake news

Spain has announced measures aimed at combating the spread of fake news, an initiative that the country’s conservative opposition has denounced as an attempt to censor critical media.

The proposal comes at a time when the debate on media freedom and the fight against harmful or misleading content have intensified in the wake of the European Parliament elections and other elections in Europe, India, and the United States, Reuters reported.

In Spain, as elsewhere, social platforms, messengers, and video apps are becoming increasingly influential in political discourse and can reach audiences far beyond traditional media.

Sanchez stated that all media will be subject to the rules. They will align Spanish regulations with the media freedom law that the EU approved in March.

This law is designed to regulate media activities as well as protect journalists from government spying or coercion to disclose sources of information, the government says.

Sanchez proposed to require media outlets to identify all shareholders who influence editorial policy, indicate the amount they receive from state and third-country sponsored advertising, and provide transparent audience data.

The conservative People’s Party questioned the timing of the bill, as it appeared two days before Sanchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez , was due to appear in court in a corruption investigation.

Sánchez dismissed the allegations as fake news, promoted by right-wing media with support from opposition parties.

The conservative People’s Party, the largest in the lower house of parliament, said the bill was a “censorship law” and that Sanchez “is now seeking to control critical media.”

In our analysis in June, we found out that the Spanish-language version of Russian propaganda media outlet Sputnik, which is under EU sanctions for spreading disinformation and supporting Putin’s war, has moved to a new domain, latamnews.lat.

At the same time, Russian propagandists have kept Sputnik’s logo, name, Sputnik Mundo, style, and even copied all historical content. You can find Sputnik articles from as far back as 10 years ago on latamnews, albeit under a different web address.

LatamNews is a very young publication in the Russian propaganda network that broadcasts to the Spanish-speaking world. It started receiving traffic on April 8 of this year, according to web analytics programs. As of June, Latam News already has a fairly large audience—650,000 visitors per month, the lion’s share of which are from Latin America and also Spain.