The Spanish competition regulator will start monitoring whether men and women get the same amount of speaking time on news programmes, in order to comply with an audiovisual law adopted by the parliament in 2022.
The law was promoted by the socialist government’s Nadia Calviño, then-minister of digital transformation, who said she would never again take part in a public debate where she was the only woman.
The competition regulator CNMC, responsible for enforcing competition law, will carry out an annual analysis of whether men and women are represented equally in the news.
It will review 250 hours of broadcasts per year from seven Spanish tv channels.
If they find instances of inequality, a broadcaster could receive a fine of up to €1.5 million.
According to the law, newscasts must convey “an equal and non-discriminatory image” of women and men. They are not permitted to promote “directly or indirectly, situations of discrimination based on sex.”
Conservative publication El Debate called the new gender law “the umpteenth example of the route to idiocy where [prime minister] Sánchez’s social engineering has put us.”
The article called out the glaring problem that awaits broadcasters:
What happens if the news of the day stars, for example, Trump, Xi, Putin, and Zelensky? Will it be necessary to package three pieces of news from Meloni to compensate and achieve parity? … If a man commits a crime, should a woman’s crime be included?
As the author rightly points out. “We are all in favour of equal rights for women and men … but this law is about ideology. It is an intrusive stupidity with a political motive that violates common sense.”
