There's been a hilarious media flap over here in Barcelona. Miquel Sellares, Socialist Pasqual Maragall's press secretary, wrote up an internal dossier on the various Catalan media of communication. It got leaked to the press, of course. La Vanguardia is tremendously pissed off, I think mostly because the dossier exposed them as the grasping for-profit company they are rather than the public benefactors they'd like to be seen as being. They compared the writer to Josef Goebbels, not once but twice, which is of course completely uncalled for. Especially when you conside La Vanguardia's utter lack of ethics: it prints articles that are false, plagiarized, biased, and fraudulent.

(Note: La Vangua takes itself very seriously as a dependable, legitimate source of information, which, of course, it isn't, but they love to think of themselves as significant. My favorite place where La Vanguardia shows up in history is in a book called Workers Against Work, available on-line, which discusses Barcelona during the revolutionary 1930s and mentions that, instead of working, "the staff of La Vanguardia would repair to a nearby tavern to drink and gamble." See, with the revolutionary militias in power, nobody could make these people do their jobs.)

Check out some of these quotes from the maddened Vanguardistas. "(They) insult the freedom of the press and of information, provide all sorts of defamations, which dishonor their authors, blah blah, blah, the Catalan government should react so that this episode does not end up damaging its credibility..." Uh, guys, the report damages YOUR credibility, not theirs. There are several more of these. The Vangua is truly pissed off. Ha, ha, ha. I just wish the Socialists had investigated a few Vangua stories to see if there was any journalistic wrongdoing behind them, the way we have. Ramos, Val, Alcoverro, Poch, Sole, Margarit...there's a list of a few names to start off with.

The report on the Vangua begins, "The paper which receives the most subsidies from the Generalitat has been the most hostile toward the new Administration." Interesting. I didn't know the Vangua got ANY subsidies from ANYBODY. I thought they were an independent newspaper. I guess I was wrong.

What the hell is the government doing subsidizing a newspaper, for Christ's sake? How can the newspaper possibly stay neutral and report honestly if it's getting government money? Why is the government spending taxpayers' money buying off the press with subsidies? This damn well should be investigated. It stinks of corruption. Unfortunately, there are no competent Spanish investigative journalists; the few who claim to be so are invariably peddlers of conspiracy theories.

Jose Antich, Jordi Juan, Enric Juliana, Alfredo Abian, and Jordi Barbeta are blasted by name as being slaves of one political party or another. Hilarious. From now on these guys are the "Gang of Five".

Regarding El Periodico, the report says, "They have a positive attitude toward the Administration of the Generalitat. The current editorial line is one of support for the coalition government of Catalonia. They expect better treatment from the Generalitat regarding subsidies."

Well, El Periodico's sold out too. Is anyone surprised?

The report says that El Pais has varied its editorial line according to what the PSOE in Madrid has wanted it to, which is no surprise, since we all know that El Pais is the Socialist Party's Pravda. Now get this. "They are expecting a subsidy, which they claim never to have had, and also good treatment regarding the penetration of Localia. They are working on--to publish or to pressure--an article on the CiU Administration's subsidies to communications media, demonstrating especially favoritism toward its direct competetor, the Grupo Godo (the owners of La Vanguardia)." Localia is a chain of very small local TV stations that belong to the Grupo Prisa, the company that owns El Pais, which has only one station in Catalonia out of its 76. Spanish right-wing conspiracy mongerers enjoy blaming everything on some kind of Grupo Prisa-El Pais evil scheme that only Batman can defeat.

As for Avui, it's losing tons of money and would go under if not for the subsidies it receives from the Administration.

So: The four major Catalan newspapers are on the take from the regional government. And you wonder why the newspapers around here ars so lousy?