Catalan public TV committee resigns over coverage of staff hostage protest

Catalan public television network TV-3’s professional committee – the board elected to watch over the station’s news reports – resigned on Wednesday morning in the wake of a protest that saw staff members hold the management hostage for over 12 hours the previous day.

In its statement the committee said it was resigning over the coverage that the station gave to the protest and to avoid “being manipulated.” Telenotícies Vespre, the network’s main news show, dedicated just 43 seconds to the story at the end of the broadcast. The committee complained that both Telenotícies and the network’s news channel 3/24 offered “a report dictated by the board that did not meet professional criteria.”

Around 200 workers kept the president of the Catalan Corporation of Audiovisual Media, Brauli Duart, and the rest of the TV-3 board locked up between midday and midnight on Tuesday as broadcasting continued as normal.

It was the tensest confrontation yet since negotiations over a new collective agreement began in March last year. The employees were demanding that the board extend the current agreement, which expired on Friday.