Illustration of El Roto on the occasion of the 40th anniversaryEL ROTO
The ultimate reason for the work of journalists is to safeguard the rights of readers.
Therefore, each member of the Newsroom, from the director to the last intern, behaves as a defender of the reader, even if only one bears that official title that, from now on, passes into the valuable hands of Soledad Alcaide, endorsed by the director and by the Professional Committee of the newspaper.
At this time, it is worth remembering that defense shared by all because in this community of EL PAÍS we have a common objective: to have the most complete, interesting information possible and not manipulated by any interest group, but at the same time to strive every day to improve our worked.
Defenders of the reader, and in the front line -literally, in this case-, are those ten colleagues who these months take turns in Ukraine to tell us about the disasters of the war.
Remembering that they take personal risks means highlighting only a part of the truth, because they often put the vocational need before barbarity so that it is not hidden.
They represent that class of journalists from all media who daily look for a story to tell so that something changes, so that their denunciations move consciences in the search for a better society.
Isn't that precisely what the journalists from this newspaper have done, uncovering hundreds of cases of pedophilia in the Spanish Catholic Church?
As defenders of the reader, they have broken down the walls of hypocrisy and silence that for decades have protected those to whom many families had entrusted the most sacred thing they had: their children.
Defenders of the reader are those who spend weeks away from their homes to detail the dramas of migration, who have explained to us the keys to the pandemic in a reliable and educational way.
And those who invest endless days in Parliament, the demonstrations in Russia and Peru or among mountains of data and reports to denounce the deterioration of public health or to give us keys to overcome the crisis.
As are those critics and prescribers of literature, music, cinema or architecture who provide clues for a better location of each reader in today's world.
No less allies of readers are those who, 46 years after the birth of EL PAÍS, respect a principle established by its founders and included in the Editorial Statute and in the first article of that contract with readers, which is the Style Book. : “EL PAÍS welcomes all tendencies, except those that advocate violence for the fulfillment of their purposes”.
Not by chance, even in such tense times in an increasingly polarized society, this newspaper continues to include dissenting opinion articles every week and contrary to its editorial line reflected in the editorials.
There is no other case among the leading newspapers in Spain, but the newspaper maintains that seal of identity, sometimes annoying for some, because it defends freedom of expression with facts and because that way it better serves its readers, who in this way always have of more elements of judgment to form their own criteria.
Defenders of the reader are those who, with their quietest and most anonymous work, edit videos, audios and texts or correct and eliminate hundreds of errors and errors, always with the frustration of not being able to do better due to lack of hands and hours.
And defenders to whom we must give much more than thanks are those readers who write to the newspaper to criticize or point out errors because, with these altruistic acts, they know they are accomplices of the Editorial Office in that objective of improving the newspaper.
Impossible to forget in this chapter Fausto Rojo, the reader to whom mistakes and errors jumped out at him like "neon lights", as he described them in several of his writings to the Reader's Advocate.
He called them "kicks to the language" and he sent, numbered, 558. He died two years ago and we still miss him.
Among the many iconic cartoons by Andrés Rábago,
El Roto,
there is one that occupies an entire side façade of the newspaper's headquarters building.
It shows the head of a comic book hero with a mask from which a pencil protrudes on each side.
"With the readers, always", he wrote in the cartoon "the best editorial writer of EL PAÍS", as some readers and also members of the Opinion section describe him.
Impossible to improve such a motto for a newspaper that in this contract with its community highlights this lapidary principle: "The interest of the reader prevails over any other."
Well that.
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