The twentieth anniversary of the 11-M attacks has brought to mind that not all media outlets face their own errors with the same honesty.
Also that the fabrication of fake news has terrible consequences on ordinary citizens.
Therefore, professional ethics does not end when the principles of journalism are met in a piece of information, but rather extends to how journalists react when things do not go well.
The serious thing is not to fail;
The truly dangerous thing is not to rectify it later and publicly assume it.
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The great hoax of 11-M
Like the entire international press, EL PAÍS made the mistake of publishing last Sunday a retouched photo of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, a practice that the
Style Book prohibits.
The image, distributed by Kensington Palace on social networks, was not reviewed by the Photography section.
“All journalistic controls, our own and those of others, have failed,” admits the editor-in-chief, Moeh Aitar.
“The image jumped to the British media and was, in turn, redistributed by the main information agencies, which also did not notice the hoax.
As it was an institution, we all believed it.”
Social media users were the first to raise the alarm about the manipulation and, later, the agencies removed the graphic material.
“The dramatic thing about the case is that we, the professionals, are the ones who have to warn the public about the deceptions,” says Aitar.
“This case has happened because we have blindly trusted a source and we should not have done so.”
The problem, he adds, is not having taken into account that the interests of the institutions do not always coincide with the right to information, the axis of which is truthfulness.
“The scrutiny of these images must be even greater if possible than those of other sources with which we work,” he concludes.
More information
Kate Middleton's photo and the slow end of evidence in the age of artificial intelligence
It wasn't done well before, but it wasn't done well after either.
Several newspaper reports later explained how the photograph had been manipulated, what happened with the agencies, the apology that the princess requested or the effects on the communication of the British Royal House.
But those news stories replicated the image without any warning.
Furthermore, until three days after Kate Middleton's confession, a notice to readers that the photo was retouched was not added to the news story in which it had been published for the first time.
This case is an example of where new image manipulation systems can drag us if we do not begin to establish thorough systematic controls.
The newspaper has also not managed to refine in the digital edition how to correct and record errors with a process that takes into account that on the Internet news from the past can surface at any time.
The Opinion section processes corrections on paper, but there is no supervision mechanism for the digital edition, where the recognition of the error depends on the random criteria of each section.
Two weeks ago I explained in this column the chain failures in an interview on the last page.
It was not corrected until this Saturday.
In a world where lies have an enormous capacity to expand, journalism has a greater responsibility in not contributing to misinformation.
It is not about reviewing the newspaper archive in light of current events.
But to correct the falsehoods and better reflect that there was a mistake.
To make the faith of errors a routine, whose habitual practice prevents the temptation to hide it.
Therefore, no error should be considered minor.
Several readers complained this week that President José María Aznar was identified as Castilian, although he was born in Madrid, in an opinion article in the
Ideas
supplement .
“The fact that he was a Cunero politician, like others, made him president of the Junta de Castilla y León, made up of Castilla La Vieja and León, but nothing more,” Gonzalo Franco wrote to the defender's mailbox.
“I am surprised that Jesús Ceberio, who knows this, insists on calling him a “Castilian hero.”
“Inappropriate error for a journalist who has already suffered a lie from that same hero.”
The former director of EL PAÍS remembers that, when Aznar was born, Madrid was part of Castilla La Nueva.
Despite this, the information on the website was rectified and an error certificate was included in all editions.
That is the correct exercise: correct and intone the
mea culpa.
The habit of admitting mistakes when they occur is and has always been what differentiates quality journalism.
To contact the defender you can write an email to
defendera@elpais.es
or send an audio of up to one minute in length via WhatsApp to the number
+34 649 362 138
(this phone number does not take calls).