RTVV director resigns and accuses Valencia PP of lying over closure

Perhaps the fiercest attack came from Iolanda Mármol, a Canal 9 journalist. On her Twitter account, she published a scathing litany of imposed style and censorship on the part of the PP regional government, which since assuming power in 1995 had used the regional station as its personal mouthpiece. “I remember when [former regional premier Francisco] Camps laid down the law at Canal 9. We were told to stop calling him Francesc at the time he was positioning himself as a possible successor to Mariano Rajoy. I was prevented from reporting that [former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez] Zapatero had announced the baby bond [a 2,500-euro payment for new parents], as if this would stop Valencians from finding out.

“When we wrote ‘resounding failure’ it would be changed to ‘modest success.’ I was told off because my Catalan accent had come out and that would annoy the anti-Catalans. I also remember when the PP won on election nights and the champagne would flow on the executive floors of Canal 9, while the journalists ate salami sandwiches. And the millions of times I wasn’t allowed to print declarations by the opposition, or by any citizen criticizing the PP, or the regional government. We weren’t even allowed to use the word ‘cutbacks.’ We couldn’t write that anti-government protests collapsed the Paseo del Prado in Madrid. They merely ‘passed through.’ It got to the stage where you were ashamed to work for them.”