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The best job in the world?

2022-08-08T10:50:28.338Z


In the midst of a paradigm shift comparable to that produced by the invention of the printing press, we have witnessed some episodes that have highlighted the lack of transparency in the media universe


Erasmus says in his

Praise of stupidity

that “the human spirit more easily reaches fiction than reality”.

If in a sermon “something transcendental and profound is talked about, people yawn, get bored, and end up falling asleep”.

On the other hand, if the speaker tells his story loudly, "everyone wakes up and follows the sermon with their mouths open."

Shoutingly we see some journalists fighting in the televised gatherings that have lately been occupying public attention in shameful competition with the madness of social networks.

The heated media brawls, enlivened by the leaking of recorded conversations between cops, politicians, prosecutors, magistrates, editors and television agitators, will end up ruining the image of journalism as "the best job in the world", according to Gabriel García Márquez's definition.

In this we find ourselves before a debate that is not trivial, which has nothing to do only with sensationalism and the presumed delinquency of some writers.

It affects social coexistence and the stability of the political system.

Jefferson said that, since democracy is based on public opinion, between having a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he preferred the latter.

The newspapers, and by extension the other media, are in any case part of the representative system.

For those who are accustomed to seeing them as an anti-power, it is therefore not a little confusing that the large media conglomerates, government watchdogs, may also be their accomplices;

or the one who is in office or the one who is going to come.

We journalists often presume to speak with the voice of the people,

but the people consider us inhabitants of the palace.

And when fighting for our independence, we live in the schizophrenia of defending democratic institutions on the basis of frequently causing their fracture.

Faced with the propagandists of fiction, we try to mediate between reality and our readers or listeners, just as deputies do between authority and those who elect or support it.

All this has worked this way for more or less two hundred years, until the information society highlighted the shortcomings of our industry and the political architecture it helps to hold together.

Faced with the propagandists of fiction, we try to mediate between reality and our readers or listeners, just as deputies do between authority and those who elect or support it.

All this has worked this way for more or less two hundred years, until the information society highlighted the shortcomings of our industry and the political architecture it helps to hold together.

Faced with the propagandists of fiction, we try to mediate between reality and our readers or listeners, just as deputies do between authority and those who elect or support it.

All this has worked this way for more or less two hundred years, until the information society highlighted the shortcomings of our industry and the political architecture it helps to hold together.

We are now facing a paradigm shift comparable to that produced by the invention of the printing press.

Then, culture came out of the monasteries, thought was liberalized, education was extended, trade was strengthened, helped by the discoveries of new territories: the nature of power and its distribution changed.

But it was not a peaceful process;

the wars of religion devastated Europe and produced tens of thousands of victims, to which were added those of the massacres of indigenous people in the conquest of the New World.

The new digital globalization, in which the distortion of public opinion plays an obvious role, is now also announced with war drums.

Every great scientific or technological invention that humanity has known has been registered under the common denominator of the democratization of power.

Giving power to the people was the result of the expansion of the railway;

of the multiplication of communications;

of the generalized use of energy or the extension of the mass media.

From each of these events profound transformations of social behavior were derived.

The competent authority, feeling its privileges threatened, always resisted change, combining censorship and propaganda.

And lately it has done so by resorting to post-truth, the spread of hoaxes and the grotesque definition of alternative facts.

It does not matter if the dominant story is respectful or not with the truth.

In such circumstances we must ask ourselves about how public opinion, or public opinions, are formed, which are the basis of democracy and are transmitted to the exercise of suffrage.

Experience shows that, like all revolutions, the digital one can also be enormously violent: it has begun to plague the landscape of our societies with victims and has spawned a new political and economic class, a new elite, destined to lead the process, to assume and control the power that is delivered to the citizens, administering it at will.

In the midst of this situation we have witnessed some episodes that have highlighted the lack of transparency in the media universe.

I have already commented on several occasions on the lack of political and intellectual debate in a large part of Western parliaments and the media, which seem neither surprised nor irritated that, in the name of defending democracy, the White House and its European acolytes do not hesitate to support your strategy, if necessary, in tyrannies such as the Saudi or Venezuelan.

We have also witnessed a great debate on the networks about the ruffian behavior of a handful of Spanish police officers and journalists dedicated to inventing lies, falsifying evidence and organizing conspiracies in order to defame and blackmail political leaders or competitors.

that discussion,

that led the dialogue for days in the corners of the cybernetic sewer, has barely deserved space in the traditional media.

And it is a pity, because in addition to their growing weakness, overwhelmed by the digital society, skepticism about their independence is added.

Incidentally, the uncivil behavior of some has thrown tons of absolutely undeserved disrepute on professional journalism.

As many times as we denounce the corruption of politicians, we should strive for a self-criticism that is conspicuous by its absence when it comes to judging reporters' complicity and caresses with criminals with badges, or analyzing the pressure of economic power on our professional autonomy.

Some have tried and have already been victims of the new intellectual racism called cancellation.

The National

from Caracas, exiled in Madrid and stripped of his newspaper by the Maduro dictatorship.

He saw his circulation on the Internet blocked, that is, censored by Telefónica de España, which has expelled not only his newspaper from the Internet but also many other independent media opposed to Chavismo.

Otero demonstrated in front of the company's historic building and spread a protest on the networks that has received little repercussion in the Spanish media.

So not only in Venezuela;

They also want to cancel Otero in our country.

Perhaps it is because he does not shout but reasons, and does not fable but denounces reality.

But he and I continue to think like Gabo that we exercise, together with many thousands of others, in this country of ours and in his, in the immense American territory of La Mancha, the best profession in the world.

And the one where he dies with his boots on.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-08-08

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