Freedom of expression vs audience rights?

Exactly three years have passed since the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation listed for the first time the two actions against the reform of the Federal Law of Telecommunications and Broadcasting of 2017, the Plenary of the highest court will decide on the origin of the guidelines to those that the electronic means of communication must adhere to in order to assert the rights of the audiences.

The promoters —separately— were 47 senators of the LXII Legislature (file 150/2017) and the PRD (file 157/2017). Minister Alberto Pérez Dayán was in charge of investigating the matter, which, in addition to obtaining the legal opinions of different government agencies, had to consider the objections of the representatives of the radio and television industry to the contested guidelines.

The sanction to the concessionaires for inserting into their newscasts an analysis or editorial comment whose transmission time has been contracted by an advertiser, without such circumstance being made known to the audience. But above all, the implementation of Codes of Ethics of the rights of the hearings enabled with the reform of October 31, 2017 has already been addressed by the Plenary of the SCJN.

The ministers will examine the presentation by Minister Pérez Dayán next Monday the 29th and could allow the authority to approve mandatory guidelines, which would be used to hinder and control the freedoms with which radio and television concessionaires operate.

The promoters of the constitutional reform also asserted their arguments before the ministers. In his opinion, it is necessary that newscasters and communicators have at all times to differentiate between opinion and information. And for the audiences it is healthy that this is distinguished at the time of each transmission. Similarly, it is intended that the authority dictate the codes of ethics on which the media must be governed.

These new control mechanisms could generate ominous consequences and repressive attitudes that, of course, would be at the discretion of the authority.

They have also fought for the imposition of sanctions on the media for percentages of income and even go as far as the suspension of transmissions on channels and stations, when, in the opinion of an official, the guidelines that they aspire to impose on the media are not observed. industry.

Without nuances: they not only seek to impose editorial lines, reduce effective transmission times and annoy the broadcasting audience with ads, using the permanent threat that whoever does not comply will see their investments affected with fines that would make them an unviable business.

Forced self-regulation or indirect censorship? Conflicting interests? Although it is true that the rights of the audience must be taken care of, and demand respect for them or quality in the content, it is also true that these must be combined with other rights such as the one that all citizens have to inform and be informed.

The audiovisual media are currently over-regulated, due to these and other retrograde occurrences. And in the face of the new trends of digital platforms —which without ties have become the preferred means by the official propaganda apparatus to disperse narratives by way— they have been irremediably at a disadvantage.

There are 72 hours left to resolve this matter. The ministers must decide if the current framework of freedoms, in terms of expression and information, is irremediably disrupted. If so, should the restrictions on electronic media be extended to other conventional media?