But is there no more good news in the world?

Accustomed for half a century, due to my profession as a journalist, to reading every morning the news of the world which, as Francois Mauriac said, is the prayer of the secular man, today the first five of those news were crimes.

And what crimes!

And the worst thing is that I feel the anxiety of not knowing if I am reading the truths or the lies of the planet, even those that happen at the door of my house.

And we live swinging between truth and falsehood, at the same time that the lie grows, while the truth shrinks in shame.

It is curious that the famous old "positive news" newspapers, which ended up succumbing due to lack of readers despite being offered free of charge, could return due to the glut of bad news that harasses us.

And the worst thing is that new technologies drag us to the difficulty of being able to distinguish between truth and falsehood.

And today there is an added danger.

There is no doubt that human beings have always been more attracted to bad news than to good news.

We like blood.

Yes, psychology explains it well.

Useless to deny it.

Everything tragic, the unthinkable, the gruesome, the degenerate, the impossible, unleashes our curiosity and our sadistic instincts.

The normal, the usual, what does not shock or shake the underground of our death impulses, ceases to interest our innate curiosity.

The tragic thing at this moment is that all of this can end up infecting even the information considered serious, the one that has information control instruments, the one that we know, or knew, that we could trust.

I am referring to the information from the traditional media for whom it was a source of pride to be able to ensure that all published information carried the guarantee of authenticity.

Do you remember the famous rule of the five questions about a news story: who, where, when, how and why?

I already know that no two journalists observing the same event will ever see the same thing, since the information will be sifted by the journalist's internal observation mechanisms.

But without a doubt they avoid consensual and explored lies.

Sometimes I wonder, and I discuss it with my friends, if the feeling that we are in the worst of all worlds, in a moment of moral degradation and increased violence like we have never experienced before, is due to a reality, or if this will be rather the result of the fact that even the most serious and credible media, carried away by the success caused by the bad and sometimes false news, of the most stinking crimes on the part of the networks, can become a true market for material profit .

And the problem is not only that we are playing with fire by taking to the extreme the bad news that, apparently, increases readership, but that we can end up convincing our world that we have never been worse.

Yes we were in the past.

But don't we say that today democracy is in crisis, that the extreme right and all the violence that it entails is growing?

And it is true, but we forget when democracy, individual freedoms, and social concerns did not exist.

There were only masters and slaves, empires and legions of miserable people.

When machismo was a source of pride, women were a simple instrument of pleasure, freedom was only for a handful of privileged people who imposed it by force, and killing even children who were born with a defect was an obligation of the parents.

Perhaps at my age I should be less optimistic, emphasizing that past times were better, but on the contrary, precisely because I have already lived so long, I believe I have an extra capacity to understand that, with all the negative news, of which a good part is false, society has made giant leaps in raising awareness about human rights, about the fight against the ignominy and infamy of past regimes of tyranny, when even the most basic rights were inconceivable.

Equality between men and women?

Children's rights?

And about the animals?

Well, that sounds crazy.

In other words, perhaps, blinded and poisoned by the abuse of negative news, we run the risk of walking with a veil over our eyes that prevents us from seeing the achievements that, although sometimes in fits and starts, human beings have been able to achieve.

Never has one lived so much and with so many comforts.

Let's open the windows, let's let in the light of what we have already conquered, let's arm ourselves and fight against lies.

And please, yes, that the children, to whom belongs the future that we prepare for them, are not the innocent victims of the sins of a capitalism that tries to take over this time not only the material but also the most sacred that exists, as is the truth, the only one capable of setting us free.

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