The ombudsman team of the Spanish public television (RTVE) responded to complaints made after the broadcast of a prejudicial and stigmatising segment about evangelicals on the programme Directo al Grano.

The incident took place on 22 September when the programme, which is broadcast on the main RTVE channel, presented evangelical churches as “dangerous”.

It used the speech of a pastor—who is not at all representative of the evangelical reality in Spain—as a reference and used images of other evangelical churches without any consultation or permission.

That broadcast sparked many complaints and protests from both individuals and evangelical organisations, who were offended by the humiliating treatment.

The Federation of Religious and Evangelical Entities of Spain (FEREDE) explained that it had filed a complaint and had also contacted the management of both RTVE and the programme to express its concerns.

Audience ombudswoman Beatriz Ariño responded directly to viewers. “We are very sorry for your disappointment, and we fully understand your anger”, she wrote in a letter to Spanish new website Protestante Digital, and all those who had complained.

Full response

In her response, she provides an explanation which we publish in full below:

The RTVE framework mandate states that no person should be harassed or discriminated against on the basis of their beliefs or religion. It also reminds RTVE professionals that, when addressing issues related to beliefs, they must choose their words carefully and avoid prejudice and bias.

For these reasons, the Audience Ombudsman quickly asked the directors of Directo al Grano for an explanation. The programme has sent us the following information to explain what happened:

"Indeed, on 22 September, the summary of the programme advanced a segment related to preachers and communities that were growing at an alarming rate, especially in Madrid.

At that moment, in the control room, where some of us responsible for the format watch the programme, we realised that both the title and the introduction talked about the evangelical Church and not about cults or false pastors. That is why the executive producer of the programme decided to cancel the segment immediately and not to develop it.

Later, on Monday 29 September, Marta Flich, the presenter of the programme, apologised and explained:

Last week, we ran a headline warning about the worrying growth of the evangelical Church in Spain. We would like to clarify that we were talking only about the spread of cultish messages by some pastors acting on their own, not about the evangelical Church as a whole, which has been in our country for 150 years.

We apologise to any viewers we may have offended, acknowledge the error and will treat issues related to religious freedom with the utmost care. Thank you for helping us to improve everyday”.