El Objetivo  http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/) is a weekly TV news show, broadcasted in Spain by LaSexta, a general content TV channel owned by Atresmedia. The TV show is produced by Globomedia. All these brands and companies are legally registered organizations. Among its different sections, the TV show includes every week a part dedicated to fact-checking (“Pruebas de verificación”): http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/prueba-verificacion/

Under the direction of the widely recognized journalist Ana Pastor, El Objetivo started being broadcasted on June 2013. Since then, this TV news show has been broadcasted each and every year, with the logical summer breaks.

Throughout the last three full months (Dec. 2016 – Feb. 2017) the TV show has broadcasted the following amounts of fact-checks (see: http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/prueba-verificacion-1/):

Dic. 2016: 8

Jan. 2017: 17

Feb. 2017: 17

The assessment above mistakenly placed Podemos as the second biggest political party in the Spanish Parliament. It is not. Actually, Podemos went to 2016 general elections in coalition with another political party (Izquierda Unida), in a joint candidacy called Unidos Podemos. This coalition was third in those elections (with 71 MP), behind the Socialist Party, that was second (with 85 MP).

Therefore, the original judgment of somewhat unbalanced treatment by El Objetivo to the different Spanish political parties must be reassessed. On the contrary, it can be concluded, indeed, that El Objetivo covers with reasonable fairness all the Spanish political parties in its fact-checking section, according to their respective level of representation in the Congress and regardless their ideological alignment.

As an additional evidence of this fairness, it can be taken into account that El Objetivo "dedicated a whole program to evaluate the first year of both Madrid and Barcelona new (Podemos') Governments management,” as El Objetivo has reminded in its explanations.

Although that specific program went beyond their fact-checking section, and therefore it wasn't part of the contents to be analyzed by this assessor, it can be interpreted, indeed, as an additional proof of El Objetivo's commitment to a fair and balanced approach in their analysis of Spanish political reality.

Considering all the above as well as the additional arguments and evidences provided by El Objetivo in their explanations report, this assessor concludes that his original assessment on "nonpartisanship and fairness" must be upgraded from "partial compliance" to "complete compliance."

Since the beginning of its fact-checking service in 2013, El Observador has not supported a candidate in any election nor advocate or take policy positions on any issues not strictly related to fact-checking.

Being a TV news show, El Objetivo can hardly provide links to their viewers. However, that transparency could be much improved in its website. Many times the section of its website devoted to fact-checks (Pruebas de verificación,  http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/prueba-verificacion/) just publishes short videos taken from the TV show, without any textual aid. In other cases, texts are added, but without links to original sources. Only in a few cases (18 of 42 fact-checks throughout the three-month period analyzed), these texts provided links to external sources that allowed people to check the information by themselves.

El Objetivo has added a new page in its website where, indeed, a clear explanation about the transparency of sources is provided. Therefore, the assessment of criterion 3a upgrades to complete compliance.

The TV show El Objetivo does not provide on its website (http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/) any specific information “detailing each source of funding over the past calendar year accounting for 5% or more of total revenue”. There is a way, however, of getting at least part of that information within the site of Atresmedia corporation (http://www.atresmediacorporacion.com/sobre-nosotros/), owner of LaSexta. It takes some effort and time to find that information and the public can easily get lost trying to find it. Therefore a clearer, more accesible data would be appreciated.

The improvements described above have been applied. The assessment of the criteria 4a upgrades to complete compliance.

El Objetivo’s website does not provide any information about “authors and key actors behind the fact-checking project”, not even of its main TV presenter, Ana Pastor (in her case, there is only a news aggregator: http://www.lasexta.com/temas/ana_pastor-1). The news published on El Objetivo’s website are anonymous. and there’s note ven a general email address to which

The improvements described above have been applied. The assessment of the criteria 4b upgrades to complete compliance.

El Objetivo’s website provides a specific, easy-to-find contact page for comments and complaints: http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/quieres-contactar-ana-pastor-equipo-objetivo-hazlo-traves-este-formulario_2017022858b549da0cf28e3b3aa69aa2.html

We suggest, however, to edit the URL of that page, in order to make it easier to find and share (something like this: http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/contacto.html).a

The improvement described above has been applied. The assessment of criterion 5a upgrades to complete compliance.

Although El Objetivo’s website has a contact page (http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/quieres-contactar-ana-pastor-equipo-objetivo-hazlo-traves-este-formulario_2017022858b549da0cf28e3b3aa69aa2.html) through which people can submit comments and complaints, it does not provide a specific email address. Adding that email address would be appreciated as a measure of additional transparency, because the current online form of El Objetivo’s contact page forces the people to accept some legal regulations about the usage by Atresmedia of their personal data as well as about any information they share.

Apart from the contact page, none of El Objetivo’s web pages include any email account or contact link, through which users can easily send their claims.

The improvements described above have been applied. The legal requirement of providing personal data by informants or audience members is true. Although that requirement could be fulfilled differently, the procedure followed by El Objetivo is totally acceptable. Therefore, the assessment of criterion 5b upgrades to complete compliance.

El Objetivo’s website does not publish its corrections policy. In the online form submitted by El Objetivo to IFCN, they claim that “if we make a mistake we correct ourselves the following week during the broadcast. We don’t have a specific organization’s handbook about it.” Then, they refer to one case in 2014 that they broadcasted a rectification.

In order to strengthen the corrections policy, this assessor has two suggestions:

1) To write and publicly share the corrections policy.

2) Whenever a correction will be made, not only broadcast that correction in the next TV show, but also publish it clearly and as soon as possible in the website as well.

The improvement described above has been applied. The assessment of criterion 6a upgrades to complete compliance.

The improvement described above has been applied. The assessment of criterion 6b upgrades to complete compliance.