Thursday, February 14, 2019

Independentist campaign to instruct foreign correspondents

Ignasi Jorro

Independence campaign to instruct foreign correspondents. 

The secessionist association Foreign Friends of Catalonia offers "help" to reporters who want to disclose "the sociopolitical reality of Catalonia."

The announcement was made last weekend by the professor at the University of Munich (Germany) and sympathizer of the separatist cause, Thomas G. Schulze. In a tweet in his personal account, the academic informed "all journalists and media interested in Catalonia: everyone at Foreign Friends of Catalonia is here to help you". According to him, "we will not tell you what you have to think or write, we will simply open the doors". "Come, look for yourself and speak is a new initiative of FFC, welcome and welcome!"

Accommodation and interviews

The initiative will be conveyed through the request of invitations. "All journalists who are interested in staying with a Catalan family (who will offer you a free stay) can contact us, we will help you carry out the interviews you want to understand what is happening in Catalonia", added the official account of the initiative. Although it is sold as a neutral project to help free information, the two Foreign Friends of Catalonia channels - Twitter and its channel of the Telegram messaging network - publish only news favorable to independence.

The initiative is also linked to the #DiadaForeign platform, which invited foreigners to participate in the independence demonstration called by the proseparación entities on September 11, 2018, Diada de Cataluña. The website of the project is registered in the name of Patricia Vila Armangué, an activist for independence and founder of this peculiar education service on the separation of Catalonia from Spain.

Pressures to journalists

It should be remembered that this is not the first time that the independence movement has flirted with international correspondents as a vehicle to amplify its cause. The Guardian reporter Dan Hancox already complained in 2016 of pressures from the then press chief of Artur Mas, Joan Maria Piqué, currently liaison of the fugitive ex-president Carles Puigdemont with the international media. At that time, Hancox lamented that Piqué "did not stop complaining about the mayor of Barcelona, ​​Ada Colau, before him".

In April of this year, the self-proclaimed Committees of Defense of the Republic (CDR) published the pamphlet Raons per la República, also addressed to journalists. In the brochure, they described themselves as citizens "who carried out peaceful actions". The CDRs attributed the violence to the "infiltrated police" and charged against the "lies of the Spanish press". They denied that street violence existed in Catalonia and attributed the incidents to a "climate of opinion that the Government wants to create."

https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/politica/corresponsales-independencia-cataluna_212397_102.html
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