The media played an important role in the trial against the State Attorney General, as the investigation focused on the leak to the press of supposedly confidential data of businessman Alberto González Amador, associate of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and prosecuted for tax fraud. A dozen journalists testified at the trial, with an obligation to tell the truth, and six of them, from four different media outlets (including EL PAÍS), assured that they knew that González Amador had admitted to his crimes in an attempt to reach a compliance agreement before the Attorney General received the email that guided the investigation – some provided WhatsApp messages that confirm this. Three also said they had access e-mail and that it was not the Attorney General who sent it to him. But all adhered to professional secrecy, a right recognized in the Constitution, not to reveal their sources.
The Supreme Court assures in its judgment that it “does not question the veracity” of the statements of the journalists who declared to know the content of the article. e-mail before it reaches the prosecutor’s hands. But this knowledge, the judges say, does not violate the Attorney General’s “duty of confidentiality” regarding information that can “compromise the right to the presumption of innocence,” such as that disclosed about González Amador. Indeed, the court affirms that the journalists’ testimony was “particularly enlightening” because it showed that the email on which the investigation focused contained confidential data. “Everyone seemed to be aware that the contents of the e-mail contained confidential data, and they took precautions for its publication, although it was a scoop and, surely, interesting news,” say the judges.
However, to prove that García Ortiz “or a person in his immediate environment” leaked the email from González Amador’s lawyer, the judges contradict the testimony of Miguel Ángel Campos, editor-in-chief of Cadena SER, who first broke the news of the leak of the email. This journalist declared during the trial that he had accessed the content of the e-mail on March 13 at noon, but that his source forbade him to publish it and only gave him permission once he The world broadcast, at 9:59 p.m., the distorted version of the Madrid president’s entourage regarding the negotiations for an agreement between the prosecution and González Amador’s defense.
Campos took advantage of professional secrecy not to reveal who had provided him with the contents of the email, but he assured that it was not García Ortiz and that, although he called the Attorney General by telephone to try to confirm the news, he did not respond or respond. The court maintains, however, that there was communication between the journalist and the State Attorney General’s Office, “because he literally transcribed the email of February 2 and was aware of the upcoming disclosure of the information note.”
To do this, the magistrates rely on the fact that the data sent by the telephone company on calls sent and received that night by the prosecutor includes a four-second call from this editor to García Ortiz at 9:38 p.m. and, immediately afterwards, a message from the journalist to the prosecutor. According to the defense, this recording responded to the call that the journalist admitted to making and during which the answering machine rang. The judges point out, however, that of all the appeals analyzed, this is the only one to record this data. “All other calls collected throughout the (Civil Guard) report in which the State Attorney General does not answer the call, the telephone company reports 0 seconds in the communication, which is extremely attention-grabbing and suggests personal communication indicative of subsequent contacts by other telematic means,” they state.
The court reflects on professional secrecy, “a constitutional right which, only at the ethical and non-normative level, is a duty whose scope and possible exceptions are not defined at the legal level”. “We are aware of the difficult balance to which a witness protected by the right to professional secrecy is subjected when answering questions of such importance for the clarification of the facts. His testimony in plenary was appreciated with the firm conviction that in no case were his answers affected in their veracity by the exercise of this inalienable right”, affirm the judges. For the court, the media’s decision not to broadcast the literal content of the email, even if they had access to it, “does nothing other than mark a striking contrast between their professional prudence and the haste with which Mr. García Ortiz did not hesitate to make possible the public dissemination of the communications, always confidential, between a lawyer and the prosecution to reach a compliant agreement”.
The magistrates refute certain accusations that, in their final reports at the end of the trial, dishonored the journalists for having used this right or reduced their credibility for having done so. “If there were an obligation to reveal sources, they would be blinded by fear of reprisals. Whoever cites their sources dries them up. The flow of information necessary in a democratic society, one of the pillars of which is a free press, would be impoverished to intolerable limits,” they warn.
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