“Iker Jiménez is not doing anything different now from what he has done for more than 20 years: spreading hoaxes, pseudoscience, denialism, conspiracy, lies… For decades, the Beast has been fed,” journalist Luis Luis Alfonso Gámez wrote last Tuesday on the social networkauthor of Magoniaa blog dedicated to the critical analysis of paranormal mysteries in which the presenter of Horizon and Fourth Millennium He occupies a prominent place for his continuous lies. Gámez’s portrait of Iker Jiménez helps to understand the figure of one of the best-known communicators in Spain, but at the same time one of the most controversial, and who this week has seen the seams with his hoaxes about DANA.
Although around the DANA All kinds of misinformation and toxic news have been circulating these days, Iker Jiménez has spread the biggest lie of all: he went so far as to say that in the parking lot of the Bonaire shopping center, in the town of Aldaia, there were “many bodies”. The reality, certified by the rescue teams, is that there were none. To this we must add that one of his closest collaborators, The ultra agitator Rubén Gisbert was caught last Sunday just before going live, kneeling to get mud on his pants. and give the false impression that it was covered in mud.
So crude manipulation of reality has put Iker Jiménez on the ropes for the first time, just when he was caressing the honeys of success. Just a few days after Horizon became the most watched program of the night on Sunday, November 4, with its coverage of DANA—even above Big Brother—, the presenter has been forced to give explanations and to apologize, something he is not very used to doing.
The criticism against him has been as widespread as it is forceful.: Journalists, comedians and social networks have pointed out him as the champion of misinformation and have accused him of serve as a loudspeaker for the most absurd theories of ultra and fascist groups.
This past Thursday, in another edition of Horizon, Iker Jiménez regretted what happened, but he did it with a small mouth. The presenter said that the supposed news of the hundreds of deaths in the Bonaire parking lot was “a personal tweet that is not Mediaset, is not Horizon. Error, of course, but It’s in my house, at dawn, angry, up to the balls and thinking that he was deceiving us.” He forgot to say that Carmen Porter, his wife and co-host of the program, announced live the number of 700 dead almost as if it were exclusive to the program.
Iker Jiménez has lived this week his particular descent into hell, but in his caseAs has happened in Valencia with the DANA, it rains in the wet. But perhaps it has been during these days that his star has begun to decline. In his long professional career, he has been changing: He began his career as a specialist in paranormal phenomenabut he has become a spreader of hoaxes who, under the excuse that he simply tells the whole truth no matter how many others want to hide it, gives voice to bizarre far-right characters and agitators who invent stories and accuse without evidence.
That is the key to questioning of Iker Jiménez that has occurred these days: he almost He has always let others, the collaborators and the guests on his programs, be the ones to spread the hoaxes. and the most absurd theories on any subject. However, with DANA it has been he himself who has been on the front line.
Lover of paranormal phenomena, of the X-files and everything related to the mystery, Iker Jiménez began directing programs related to these matters from a very young age. In the early 90s of the last century, when he was barely 20 years old, he directed and presented his first program, The other dimension. Thanks to his talent for providing the esoteric and the fantasy with an informative varnish, which gave a semblance of reality and seriousness to content that moved between skepticism, fantasy and imagination, Iker Jiménez made the jump to Cadena Ser, with Millennium 3. It was the definitive boost. It didn’t take long for him to move on to the next screen, television: in 2005 he premiered Fourth Millenniumstill broadcast on Cuatro.
For years he remained on that record until he became one of the references in Spain of the mystery, the esoteric and the paranormal. Jiménez became an authority on what does not exist or cannot be explained: ghosts, apparitions, aliens, haunted places, etc.
However, Iker Jiménez found the world of the supernatural too small. Last October he explained it in an interview: “I came from the 90s, when they laughed at these topics. I have always done events. I never had doubts, I never wanted to go from what I don’t go, but I haven’t given up either.” left alone in that world of the supernatural. People think that this gives you an audience, and it’s not like that, supernaturality lowers your audience, but it also gives you a very loyal audience. When we came to TV, I didn’t want to be the king. of fear. Maybe after the pandemic people “he saw in me an honest guy, a guy who believes what he says.”
As Jiménez explained in that interview, The opportunity to leave the field of speculation and move to that of information came in 2020 with the covid pandemic. That’s where his second program was born, Horizon. Initially, this was a space for dissemination and information. But apply the same criteria and the same rigor to a paranormal phenomenon as to a current issue It doesn’t usually turn out well. Speculating and forcing the truth with Bélmez’s faces is not the same as reporting on DANA.
But Iker Jiménez considers himself a journalist, in every sense of the word. However, almost from the beginning Horizon became a program that, in addition to bet on the fiercest sensationalismwelcomed characters without any scientific rigor, gave voice to absurd and conspiracy theories about covid and housed deniers of vaccines.
Once the pandemic is over, Horizon has become a mixed bag in which any matter is capable of being treated from the perspective of “They are hiding the truth from you; only we will tell it to you”.
The program doesn’t even exhaustively track current events; It is a space open to hoaxes of all kinds and conditions and nourishes its content with what generates the most controversy on social networksespecially if they give air to the extreme right. There Iker Jiménez has his pool of collaborators, each one stranger and more ultra: characters who defend fascism and racism have paraded through his program; Some have even gone so far as to say that Palestinians are “human garbage.”.
One of the most famous controversies was that of Roma Gallardoanother regular collaborator of Iker Jiménez who launched another hoax to attack the trans law: He claimed to have gone to the civil registry to change his sex to be a woman. “It’s very simple. You just need to bring your ID and have the will, they don’t ask you for anything else,” he explained in Horizon of Four. “They don’t ask you anything, they don’t question anything,” he said.
Despite all these hoaxes and poisoningdespite giving rise to all kinds of speculation, despite his tendency towards alarmismIker Jiménez retains the support of Mediaset. Viewers support him and his programs are among the most watched on Cuatro, with audiences around 10%. In fact, last September he renewed his long-term contract with Mediaset, which practically guarantees him immunity despite the turbulent week he has experienced.
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