Spanish TV journo leaves subordinates cowering after verbal shoeings The news editor of Spanish regional television company Castilla-La Mancha Televisión (CLMTV) is herself in the news this week following accusations she persistently abuses her staff with foul-mouthed outbursts. According to recordings obtained by cowering subordinates, Victoria Vigón regularly offers frank off-camera analysis …
Too much of it apparently.
By European standards that's too little. Come on, Espana si, Turkey no. Her name is Victoria not Gözde Kansu.
And on the "el reg angle": it will be interesting how this pans out from the perspective of how other countries apply eligibility of covert recordings obtained by a private person without appropriate authority to record. USA this depends on state with most states having that as clearly inadmissible. Eu depends on country, but usually inadmissible too.
"it will be interesting how this pans out from the perspective of how other countries apply eligibility of covert recordings obtained by a private person"
IANAL, but there have been other similar cases in Spain -usually in private companies- where similar evidence has been accepted -as corroboration of witness testimony, not as proof by itself- by the Spanish labour courts (which are separated from civil and criminal courts). The rationale is that in cases of bullying, this might be the only way for the victims to prove their cases.
Anyway, being courts what they are, the final result is anybody's guess, depending on political pressure, media coverage and public opinion.
Disclaimer: If I was Mrs. Vigón's boss, she'd be already unemployed.
If they are objecting to the recordings of the abuse, then surely someone just needs to lay in wait for the Vogon woman and deliver a good slapping beyond the view of anyone else. Hey presto - no crime was committed because even if someone got it on camera it would have been without permission!
Some time back we had an accidental on-mic moment where the presenter for a current affair's program on one of the commercial stations, berated people when she thought the camera was off.
Then a week later, Kerry O'Brien, who hosted The 7:30 Report on the ABC, did the same thing.
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Perhaps you've been unlucky. My experience is that managers and bosses -those with more braincells than fingers, at least- try really hard to prevent this kind of incidents, as they usually let the company open to being sued big time and generating lots of bad PR, as these cases are usually well covered by the press.
I've seen this kind of thing over the years in two of my many clients. These managers verbally abused their staff often, even with a contractor (me) watching. In both cases I run like hell (after finding some suitable excuse). One of them was sued by several of his employees and lost the case. The other closed shop ~two years after my visit.
Anecdotally, I also did some contract work for a small IT company with a dozen workers or so, where there was lots of verbal abuse going in both directions. A typical piece of conversation could be something like this:
Boss:" employee_name, so mamón ¿cuando mé vas a dar el informe que te pedí?"
Employee:" Te lo daré cuando a tí se te ponga de los cojones reclamarle a another_employee_name los datos que necesito.".
I'm happy to say they're still in business. :-)
YMMV, of course.
Put them in a position of power and they make plastic plods look submissive. Most of them think you're a personal belonging which can be ordered about without question and the sad part is usually the employees put up with it. Good to see some of them fighting back.
But it looks as if they will find themselves in trouble, not her, for recording the abusive behaviour. There is something wrong, in a power-protecting way, in any jurisdiction which makes it illegal to gather evidence of wrongdoing; but it's a favourite response of authority.
I can't recall who it was, but a civil rights person in the US remarked last week that the most effective weapon for black Americans in the fight against racism was the video recording capability of the iPhone. It's just done for one policeman.
"Typical Spanish attitude
Put them in a position of power and they make plastic plods look submissive."
I've generally found that when people claim that "All X have Y trait" they are talking out of their hats. I live in Spain and I haven't seen power-related dickishness as peculiarly Spanish...in my experience the ratio is about what you would experience in the UK. There's powerful people who are OK and there's assistant managers going mental with a tiny bit of power, same as anywhere else.
In Spain audio recordings of third parties without you being part of the conversation are not accepted as evidence and you might find you could be charged for not respecting somebody's right to privacy. If you are part of the conversation then it might be accepted or you might be charged for not respecting the data protection act.
It either has to be a video recording or happen in front of two witnesses who are willing to testify.
That doesn't mean they can't be used to exert pressure on someone as in this article. But they could get charged for their trouble.
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"Without knowing the context... How do you know she wasn't provoked by her co-workers in the minutes before that recording?"
That's no excuse for her abusive, and lack of professional, conduct. How about reading the article again. "She persistently abuses her staff with foul-mouthed outbursts." "Staff expressed their concerns to management at CLMTV at the beginning of 2014." "Inspector of Work and Social Security rules the matter a "very serious" breach of employment law."
How much more context do you need?
PS. "you have no way of knowing whether she really means the threats or not."
Maybe YOU don't know if she really means to KILL anyone, but rational people do know the difference between abusive, empty, over the top threats such as hers, and real threats to kill such as Taliban or ISIS. It's not the threats, it's the abuse. Geddit?
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Give it a rest. She's a foul-mouthed abusive harpie getting her comeuppance, and you're acting like a trolling contrariean. I don't care where she uttered her latest outburst, there's plenty of evidence that this is an ongoing problem, and I for one would not want to only have the choice to hear her shit or quit my otherwise satisfactory job in television. You're starting to sound like Matt Bryant. Save your lawyering for people that deserve it. You've made many good points in the past. Please don't negate any good will you've built up by defending the indefensible. Leave that to the shysters.
Respectfully...
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Or the point of the recording is that is what she is always like, no need to wind her up. I admit that I'm prejudging her, but it has been my experience that when employees finally screw up the courage to stand up to their boss it is not because this is the first or even the tenth time their boss has pulled this shit. It is because they are sick and fed up with it and it is either risk getting fired by speaking up, quitting, or living with an ulcer and taking it out on your family at home. Why you are defending somebody like her is beyond me.
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I don't know about Spain, but in this country the police take death threats against identifiable individuals (where an attack is physically possible) rather seriously.
Journalism seems to have a most unpleasant culture of aggression, from the revelations about the British press. Perhaps it's time people stopped trying to defend it, and fixed it.
It's probably a breach of internal company policy, but the making such a recording for private use, (which does NOT include it's publication on the internet), would be unlikely to result in legal proceedings against the person who made it.On the other hand, publishing it, so that the whole world can, (and likely will), judge her and form an opinion based on less than two minutes of audio recording, which can easily be taken out of context, is clearly wrong.
Without knowing the context, you have no way of knowing whether she really means the threats or not. How do you know she wasn't provoked by her co-workers in the minutes before that recording?
While I'm not going to speculate on whether the alleged abuse takes place on a regular basis, one thing is clear. You may make such recordings for private use, but strictly private use only. You need the other party's consent to use those recordings for publication, either after the fact, or ideally, prior to commencement of the recording.
I'm no lawyer, but I understand the laws in most countries are very clear on this… Those recordings technically could not be used in a court of law as they were not collected with the other party's consent. A transcript of the recording, however, could be used.
While this in no way excuses the alleged abuse, the person doing this recording cannot be excused for overstepping a boundary regarding the publication of secret recordings. The people concerned could have jeopardised their chances of prosecution by doing this.
"She should be given a six month sabbatical in order to detox and regain her equilibrium."
As the late Auberon Waugh once suggested in a slightly different context, sentenced to spend six months on a Scottish island on a diet of brown rice, being taught Buddhism.
That should ensure a lack of recidivism.
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