SHUTTING UP LIKE A WHORE, that's what according to The Economist the Spanish media conglomerates do in a scenario of tight control by the Zapatero administration (subscription only, but you can read it in full here). For much less than this, Bush gets accused all over the world (and yes, also by Zapatero and his guys) for muzzling the independent voices in journalism:

SPANIARDS have a phrase to describe the attitude of the country's media giants as they await the government's decision on the allocation of digital television licences: “callarse como una puta”, to shut up like a whore. Why publish a report that may offend the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, if it could jeopardise your share of the digital cake? This was what one journalist was told by his bosses when he asked why his report describing Tony Blair's lukewarm reception of Mr Zapatero's plan to cure the ills of Islamic radicalism through an “alliance of civilisations” had not been published.

In a country whose bestselling newspapers are mostly football-oriented, it is the all-powerful television that really matters. Mr Zapatero's government has caused considerable upset by appearing to lean too far towards the leftish Grupo Prisa, run by Jesús Polanco. The group, which owns the newspaper El País, runs the country's only analogue pay-television channel, Canal Plus, through its sister company, Sogecable (this monopoly arose from a licence given by a previous Socialist prime minister, Felipe González). Until the analogue shutdown and conversion to digital, planned for 2010, the government will allow Canal Plus to broadcast without the requirement for a set-top decoder, with the exception of a few high-value programmes such as football coverage.

The Socialist Party government will allocate digital television licenses. The People’s Party fears a monopoly by Grupo Prisa (which owns El País) and Sogecable (which runs Canal Plus).

[...] With the argument over digital television licences likely to remain live right up to the next election, due in three years' time, the media will continue to be cautious over criticising the government. And Mr Zapatero, like all his predecessors, will come to seem insincere in his stated ambition of eradicating government influence over the media.

Some of you will remember the PRISA media conglomerate as the one behind the agit-prop campaign between March 11 2004, the day of the terrorist attack in Madrid) and March 14, the day of the general election which put Zapatero in office. No wonder some think that he's just paying the unvaluable help he got.

(h/t: Mao)

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