Of the six million euros, 5.5 million (91.2%) have been donated by the Basque Government to the Spanish media and 8.8% to the Basque media. The Vocento Group (El Correo y El Diario Vasco) will receive 2,659000 euros, 303,000 euros more than last year; the News Group (Deia, News from Gipuzkoa, News from Álava and Onda Vasca) 953,560 euros, 36,819 more than last year; the SER 643,962 euros, 123,718 more than last year. Here is the full list of the distribution of funds.

Last year it was distributed without a call, this year the call for distribution has been made public. Compared to last year, money has been distributed among more media, as ten other media have been included in the distribution, but this year the government has allocated one million more and that million has not been distributed among the new media, half has been distributed. In other words, the media that supported last year have received more money in general, even though, according to the CIES, the largest have lost readers in a paper year, and the government has adopted the CIES as a criterion for money sharing.

One of the requirements to be considered in the distribution has been the existence of “daily communication media”, awarded by radio, television, newspapers and digital media, the weekly being the only format they have left out. With this decision they have left out ARGIA, although ARGIA also offers daily information on its pages. In 2021, every week and only considering Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, it has had 52,000 readers according to the CIES – not to mention the readers of Navarra and the Northern Basque Country – more than half a thousand euros in this distribution. Taking into account the weekly hearing, outside the Internet readers argia.eus, ARGIA should receive about EUR 150,000 in this last call, if we look at what the similar media have received.

The work of ARGIA on the Internet does fall under that status of the government, but it is based on the Internet data of 2021 of the CIES, and ARGIA has the data of 2022, but the data of 2021 has only on paper, not on the Internet, that the medium that wants that data has to pay to CIES, that has not paid and that has no data out of distribution. Despite having published between 15 and 20 articles per day and several thousand visitors, ARGIA has been left out of the Internet distribution arguing that we did not have the 2021 data. Thus, including the Internet and the weekly, in the distribution of these 6 million euros corresponds to ARGIA more than 150,000 euros.

The government, with its own elections and conditions, has left ARGIA out again: it has rejected the journals and in the case of the websites it has left out the data from CIES 2021 on the Internet. Last year, for its part, the exclusion argument was that they only considered “supports with more structural expenditure”. ARGIA has requested in the 2022 distribution of the resolution file and we are waiting for a detailed analysis of how the criteria have been applied and how the distribution has been carried out.

By criteria and conditions, it is important to recall the objectives set by the Government in the call for funds to be distributed:

Claiming the “right of citizens to information and a plural, plural and independent journalism offer”, the call seeks to guarantee “the activity of the media that provide daily information” and has evidently not fulfilled its purpose, among other aspects, to the extent that it has left ARGIA out.

In the words of the Government’s call, “during the pandemic Basque citizens have guaranteed and guaranteed the right to true, professional and proven information, facing the risk of misinformation and collaborating in the media literacy of citizens”. This is the objective that the Government has set at the base, the Government has asked us for a report of protocols, working methods and professional codes against misinformation, but it has decided to exclude some of the media that we contribute to dealing with this misinformation.

Another example of unequal distribution of public money

The Basque institutions allocate to the Spanish-language media, including institutional advertising and the end of the year, a much higher amount of public money than the subsidies they legally receive for the promotion of the Basque country. Once again, what with public money strengthens and excludes our institutions, to whom they give economic support and to whom they do not, has become apparent, instead of building an egalitarian playing field, deepening imbalances. They are also at risk of encouraging media fighting in Basque.

In the media sector that has so much power in today’s societies, the impact of public money is evident. Which means are reinforced, which means are used to survive, which are excluded... decided by the institutions. Power relations in the current media landscape are not the result of anything, it is a field cultivated for years. Kuriously, the unequal treatment they give to each other goes against the “plural journalism offer” proclaimed by the Government.

ARGIA will continue to proudly claim its independence, which greatly makes our community possible. We rely on solidarity among community members.

If you want to strengthen the project, if you like the independent journalism that we do, do it now more than ever from ARGIA.